14 July 2014

Mars and Spica so close yet so far


Mars and Spica will be just one degree apart today evening. We can see the red planet mars and Spica shining bright in the southwest sky after sunset. The pair is easy to spot due to their colour difference, mars will be red and south west of mars will be blue-white star Spica. Although they appear just one degree apart from each other, the closeness ends there.
 
The distance from earth to these two celestial bodies are truly immense.  Mars after coming close earth on April 14th, it is slowly moving away from us and now mars is close to one AU.  Spica is at a distance of 15810494 AU form us, one AU is the distance between earth and Sun, which is 150 million kilometres. As we can see, the difference is immense. If the skies are clear, in the evening, we will enjoy the view and now we know they are so close yet so far.
 

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