In a breathtaking sight that takes away the hearts, the planet Mars adorns the sky of our Arab world, throughout the evening of Thursday, corresponding to the first of December, in a phenomenon that is repeated approximately every 26 months.
And according to the Astronomical Society in Jeddah, it is now Monitor the conjunction of the growing humpback moon with the giant planet Jupiter of our Arab solar system, as it will separate them by about 4 degrees in a beautiful view that is easily seen with the naked eye.
The reasons for the occurrence of the phenomenon?
This occurs in conjunction with the planet’s closest distance from Earth, which is 81 million km, and it is an event that is repeated every two years, but the distance is variable due to the orbits of the elliptical planets around the sun.
The red planet now exceeds the brightness of the star Sirius, and when observing through a medium telescope, the planet’s disk and the features of its main surface terrain can be seen, and if you do not own a telescope, there is no problem, because the view with the eye alone is very beautiful.
According to the US space agency, NASA, the reason for the recurrence of this phenomenon every two years is that the planet Earth, which is closer to the sun than Mars, It orbits faster than Mars – so much faster in fact that our planet makes two revolutions around the Sun in the same time it takes Mars to orbit the Earth once. So van About every 26 months, Earth comes in from behind Mars and overtakes it.
As we pass the Red Planet this year, it will appear to us as if Mars is moving up and down. Then, as we move away along our curved orbit and see the planet from a different angle, the illusion will disappear and we will again see Mars moving in a straight line.
This apparent abnormal motion is called “retrograde motion”. The illusion also occurs with Jupiter and other planets that orbit farther from the sun.
Not the first time:
The manifestation of Mars tonight in the sky of the Arab world was not the first for it this year, as the Astronomical Society in Jeddah monitored the appearance of Mars in the sky of the Arab world before sunrise on Tuesday morning, corresponding to the 26th of last April, the conjunction of the moon with the planet Mars, as they were separated by 4 degrees in Mashhad. See it with the naked eye as another. Globalism.
And the Astronomical Society in Jeddah said that the moon and Mars are observed about 3 hours before sunrise – towards the southeastern horizon, and since the apparent distance between the moon and Mars is large, they will not appear together in the field of view of the telescope. , but this can be done through an endoscope.
And she added, “The planet Mars gradually appeared in the morning sky, weeks after it reached solar conjunction on October 8 of last year when it was obscured in the sun’s glare, and since that time the eye’s vision has improved without assistance and its brightness has gradually increased.”“.
Mars
Mars or the red planet is the fourth planet in terms of distance from the sun in the solar system and is the outer neighbor of the earth and is classified as a rocky planet, from the group of terrestrial (earth-like) planets.
As for his name in Arabic, it is derived from the word “Amarkh”, which means the owner of red spots.: Mars) It is the name of the god that the Romans took for war, and as for the title of the red planet, it is caused by the reddish color of the planet, or redness due to the high percentage of iron oxide dust on its surface and in its atmosphere. Mars has a diameter of about 6,792 km (4,220 mi), which is equal to the radius of Earth and the second-smallest planet in the solar system after Mercury.
Its area is estimated at a quarter of the land area. Mars revolves around the sun in an orbit that is approximately 228 million km away from it, or 1.5 times the distance between the Earth’s orbit and the sun. The smooth Arctic Basin covers the Northern Hemisphere approximately 40% of the planet and may have a significant impact on the planet.
Mars has two moons, the first is called Deimos, which means terror in the Greek language, and the second is Phobos, which means fear, and they are small and irregular in shape, and they could be two asteroids that he captured, similar to 5261 Eureka, which is a Martian Trojan..