Mars and the earth come together

Today Mars will arrive at 112 million kilometers from the Earth, the shortest distance between the two bodies in the journey around the 26-month sun of the red planet.

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This event occurred on the evening of March 5 in the Americas and March 6 in Vietnam. It happened just two days after Mars, Earth and the sun were aligned (with the earth in the middle), Space said.

For observers in the Americas, Mars will appear in the form of a brilliant glow of reddish orange in the sky if they admire it with the naked eye. If observed with small or medium telescopes, they will see the entire disk of Mars.

Illustration of Mars and Earth. (Photos: scientificamerican.com)

After 26 months, that means that in 2014 Mars will be closer to the earth than it is today. The shortest distance between the two planets continues to decrease in the 'face-to-face' after the next 26 months.

'From now until 2018, the minimum distance between Mars and the planet will diminish in the times when Mars comes closest to Earth on its orbit around the sun' , Jane Houston Jones, an astronomer of US Space Agency (NASA), said.

On August 27, 2003, Mars was only about 55.7 million kilometers from the globe. It is the shortest distance between the two planets for nearly 60,000 years.

Not only Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are visible in the night sky over the past few days and coming.

The moon will appear near Mars around 23:00 tomorrow night (about 11 am on March 8, Vietnam time).