I first heard about this supposed momentous event thru forwarded SMS, (thanks to Globe Unlimitxt) and again in my e-mail three or four times. The e-mail reads:


The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!

This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287... (some technical blah blah)... The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be next to the moon, the brightest object in the night sky... (more technical stuff)... Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. (some more reasons why you should look up at the sky on August 27)
Share this with your children and grandchildren. (dinamay pa mga anak at apo)
NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN (You really have to do it now)

Exciting huh? Its SPAM! I thought I was online long enough to know spam from actual mail... but Noooo... I got fooled like everyone else. It is an e-mail that has been circulated for 3 years now. The actual Mars close to the earth event happened in August of 2003. As it turns out, the sender of the e-mail forgot to put a year in his e-mail (probably got overly excited or something). And even though the phenomenon happened already, the e-mail took on a life of its own.

Three years too late... I tried looking for pictures from 2003 (pampalubag-loob) because I was really looking forward to actually seeing Mars without the aid of a telescope. Here's one taken by Bill Rosen. Mars is the bright star-like thing above and to the right of the moon.



For more info read the following:

NASA: 2003, Mars Closest Approach
CNN: Earthlings revel in Mars Close-up
Universe Today
Yahoo! Answers



In the shoes of Marvin the Martian

The picture to the left is quite interesting, It's from NASA. The white speck somewhere in the middle of the photo is earth as seen from Mars. It was taken by Opportunity, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (I remember how exciting that launch was...) The only thought I got when I looked at this photo was whether some Martian also sent an e-mail with an "un-yeared" date that fooled a zillion Martians that the earth will be close to Mars on August 27, 2006.

Labels: blah (3x), forwarded e-mails