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escee
q1dm6

Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Perth, Australia
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Jul-27-2005 23:48
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Antistatic
Supreme tranceaddict

Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Perth
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suckers
http://www.space.com/scienceastrono..._mars_hoax.html
| quote: | Those are snippets from a widely-circulated email. Only the first sentence is true. The Red Planet is about to be spectacular. The rest is a hoax.
Here are the facts: Earth and Mars are converging for a close encounter this year on October 30th at 0319 Universal Time. Distance: 69 million kilometers. To the unaided eye, Mars will look like a bright red star, a pinprick of light, certainly not as wide as the full Moon.
Disappointed? Don't be. If Mars did come close enough to rival the Moon, its gravity would alter Earth's orbit and raise terrible tides.
Sixty-nine million km is good. At that distance, Mars shines brighter than anything else in the sky except the Sun, the Moon and Venus. The visual magnitude of Mars on Oct. 30, 2005, will be -2.3. Even inattentive sky watchers will notice it, rising at sundown and soaring overhead at midnight.
You might remember another encounter with Mars, about two years ago, on August 27, 2003. That was the closest in recorded history, by a whisker, and millions of people watched as the distance between Mars and Earth shrunk to 56 million km. This October's encounter, at 69 million km, is similar. To casual observers, Mars will seem about as bright and beautiful in 2005 as it was in 2003.
Although closest approach is still months away, Mars is already conspicuous in the early morning. Before the sun comes up, it's the brightest object in the eastern sky, really eye-catching. If you have a telescope, even a small one, point it at Mars. You can see the bright icy South Polar Cap and strange dark markings on the planet's surface.
One day people will walk among those dark markings, exploring and prospecting, possibly mining ice from the polar caps to supply their settlements. It's a key goal of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration: to return to the Moon, to visit Mars and to go beyond.
Every day the view improves. Mars is coming--and that's no hoax.
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___________________
Two Tribes '06 - Sunday March 5 @ Supreme Court Gardens
PM for more info
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Jul-28-2005 00:36
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Aesthetic
- ---(ps3.addicted)--- -

Registered: Jul 2002
Location: somewhere between the melody and the pads
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Jul-28-2005 00:58
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Anomyst
www.interview.net.au
Registered: May 2003
Location: Melbourne
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wow, thankyou for the correction!!!
___________________
Too old for this shit. But still luvin it
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Jul-28-2005 01:00
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Lister Cooray
InProgress

Registered: Jun 2005
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Origins: The piece quoted above is another example of an item that was once true but is now being circulated again, long after the events it describes have come to pass. This article was relevant back in 2003, but it is not applicable now, two years later.
Mars did make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth which culminated on 27 August 2003, when the red planet came within 35 million miles (or 56 million kilometers) of Earth, its nearest approach to us in almost 60,000 years. At that time, Mars appeared approximately 6 times larger and 85 times brighter in the sky than it does ordinarily. (The message quoted above was often reproduced with an unfortunate line break in the middle of the second sentence of the second paragraph, leaving some readers with the mistaken impression that Mars would "look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" and not realizing that the statement only applied to those using viewing Mars through a scope with 75-power
magnification.)
Although Mars' proximity to Earth in August 2003 (referred to as a perihelic opposition) was a rare occurrence, the red planet comes almost as near to us every 15 to 17 years. To the unaided observer, Mars' appearance in August 2003 wasn't significantly larger or brighter than it is during those much more common intervals of closeness.
Mars will have another close encounter with Earth in in 2005, but that occurrence will take place in October (not August), and the red planet will appear about 20% smaller than it did during similar circumstances in 2003.
The Mars phenomenon of 2003 was featured in a couple of articles on the web site Space.com which are still well worth the reading: Mars to Get Closer than Ever in Recorded History in 2003 and Orbital Oddities: Why Mars will be So Close to Earth in August. Interested observers also joined Mars Watch 2003 through the MarsToday.com web site.
___________________
Next Gigs:
In Rotation @ Brown Alley (May 30)
Anthony Pappa @ Brown Alley (June 14)
Poison Apple @ ladida (Weekly Saturdays) launching June 21.
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Jul-28-2005 01:57
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