Binoculars can bring details of Mars surface to LV yards

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2003 | 9:13 a.m.

The last time Mars was this close to Earth, mammoths roamed Southern Nevada. This time around, the red planet will have a more larger and more attentive audience of humans.

Mars' orbit will bring the planet closer to Earth this week than at any other time in almost 60,000 years. It will be so close that even August's full moon won't be able to hide Mars' bright redness.

The best time for Southern Nevadans to get the closest view of Mars is 2:51 a.m. Wednesday.

How close is close-up? Roughly 34.6 million miles away, Dale Etheridge, director of the Community College of Southern Nevada Planetarium, said.

Astronomer and physicist Stephen Lepp, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said that to the naked eye, Mars will appear as a bright red glowing object, 145 times more distant than the moon,

But with a telescope or binoculars, Mars watchers will be able to see details, such as the southern ice cap, Lepp said.

The Planetarium and Student Observatory on the Cheyenne Avenue campus of the Community College of Southern Nevada will be open to the public tonight through Thursday so more members of the public can have a close encounter with Mars.

The Las Vegas Astronomical Society plans to join skygazers at the Planetarium to view the red planet, and the society's newsletter notes that "even modest telescopes will reveal a fascinating wealth of detail," such as weather patterns, haze, dust clouds and the poles of the planet."

A special planetarium show is scheduled for 8 p.m. each night followed by free telescope observations from 9 p.m. until midnight, weather permitting.

Mars will continue to be the featured attraction at the Planetarium through October.

It's a planet with which Earthlings should be better acquainted. The earth passes Mars in its orbit every 26 months.

"We go around (the sun) once a year and every two years Earth catches up to Mars' orbit," Lepp said. "It's going slower than us."

The brightening planet can be seen with the naked eye.

"While the hype is fun and this is the closest Mars has been in about 60,000 years, the planet has been almost this close to Earth several times in the last century," Etheridge reminds viewers.

"Because of the elliptical nature of its orbit, very close passes occur about every 15 to 17 years," Etheridge said. But not this close.

Still, the Las Vegas Valley was vastly different at the time of Earth's last closest encounter with the Red Planet, geoscience professor Stephen Rowland said from his UNLV office.

"It was cooler and wetter in the Las Vegas Valley, probably with juniper tree forests in the valley," he said.

Sloths, mammoths and bison roamed Southern Nevada, feasting on lush grasses and brush under the red glowing planet, Rowland said. It was the middle of the last great Ice Age.

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