Amusing factoid of the day

[bellinghman]

So, at the end of this month, Mars will be closer than it has been for 60,000 years.

Pretty impressive, till you discover how much closer than the previous closest distances that is.

It's 110 metres closer than two years ago,

It's 18 centimetres closer than it was in 1924. Yes, that's a mere seven inches. Less than two hands. In over 55 million kilometres.

Correction: As pointed out, that miniscule distance is a scale distance, assuming Mars is actually 528 metres away, not 100 million times further away, and the size of a tennis ball.

BBC report

Sometimes, details like this get missed.

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Retrograde motion of Mars was one of the main reasons planets are so called, from the Greek for 'wanderer'. Not only does Mars go across the sky, sometimes it wanders backwards for a while.

(I wish the spell checker here understood English. Or am I missing something?)