Mars comes closest to the globe on weekends

The red planet will arrive at the closest globe to the end of May and also achieve the highest brightness when the Earth is between Mars and the Sun.

The US Aerospace Agency (NASA) announced on May 22 that Mars will be only 75.6 million kilometers from Earth . The red planet will reach the highest point (where it reaches the maximum brightness) in the sky in the middle of the night, at 35 degrees from the southern horizon.

By May 30, Mars's orbit would cause the distance between it and the Earth to shrink by another 800,000 kilometers. This is the shortest distance between the two planets in the past 11 years.

From May 22 to June 3, Mars will be located opposite the Sun across the globe.(Photo: NASA)

So, from the evening of May 22 , people around the world can see Mars is brighter than normal from dusk to dawn, Space reported.

Its brightness will be 7 times greater than Saturn and about 17 times that of the red giant Antares - the brightest star in the constellation Celestial Constellation and the 16th object that humans can observe from Earth. Mars continues to show up in the sky until June 3.
The phenomenon of Earth entering between Mars and the Sun takes place every 26 months. By 2018, Mars will continue to be the closest to the Earth.

When Mars reaches its position opposite the Sun across Earth, its brightness will be 80 times greater than it was when it was farthest away from Earth, according to EarthSky.

The location of Mars, Saturn and Antares stars in the night sky on the nights of 20, 21 and 22 May.(Graphics: EarthSky)

Because Mars's orbit is increasingly flat, the red planet will become closer to Earth on similar occasions in the future. It will also get closer to the Sun over time, NASA claims.

Another interesting thing is that the "blue moon" also appears in the sky on the night of May 21.

Normally, the moon will circle 3 times in each spring, summer, autumn and winter season. If the moon is 4 times in a certain season, people call the third full moon " blue moon ". The latest " blue moon " event took place in August 2013.