Washington (June 21, 2018): For the first time in last 15 years, it is happening that Red planet will look bigger and brighter in coming weeks.
According to NASA, this year Mars opposition will occur on July 31. During opposition, Mars is especially photogenic because it can be seen fully illuminated by the Sun as viewed from Earth.
It is because when Mars and Earth are close to each other, Mars appears very bright in our sky. The most recent one happened in 2003, when the distance was only 55.7 million km away, the closest in nearly 60,000 years.
An astronomer, Dean Regas said that Mars will be visible to the naked eye, it will look like a glowing orange beacon of light rising in the southeast after sunset. It’ll be much brighter than any star, brighter than Jupiter, nearly as bright as Venus and it will be seen every night for the next several months.
However, Mars will look fainter by mid-August as the red planet and Earth will travel farther away from each other in their orbits around the Sun.
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