Geeesh - I just hope the author knows he’s perpetuating one of the dumbest urban myths on the Internet. As an amateur astronomer someone mails me this one several times a year - it’s even out there now as a PowerPoint presentation - and it’s mostly wrong. It began when Mars did indeed make a close approach - but, of course, it was never anything like the size of the moon - that was in 2003, as I recall, and Mars reached a size to our eyes of about 25 arc seconds. The Moon is roughly 30 arc minutes to our eyes - we can’t even see Mars as a disc without a telescope.
Yes, the 35 million miles is correct - but the moon is about 140 times closer and appears roughly 70 times larger.
I know this is just a comic strip - but it’s a bleeep good one with some good ideas and I hate to see it perpetuating this idiocy.
Geeesh - I just hope the author knows he’s perpetuating one of the dumbest urban myths on the Internet. As an amateur astronomer someone mails me this one several times a year - it’s even out there now as a PowerPoint presentation - and it’s mostly wrong. It began when Mars did indeed make a close approach - but, of course, it was never anything like the size of the moon - that was in 2003, as I recall, and Mars reached a size to our eyes of about 25 arc seconds. The Moon is roughly 30 arc minutes to our eyes - we can’t even see Mars as a disc without a telescope.
Yes, the 35 million miles is correct - but the moon is about 140 times closer and appears roughly 70 times larger.
I know this is just a comic strip - but it’s a bleeep good one with some good ideas and I hate to see it perpetuating this idiocy.