I am getting approximately one gazillion emails a day now about this “Mars as big as the Moon” meme going around the web. I’ve been meaning to write a page about it, but have always found some excuse to blow it off. Anyway, I finally put it up. Here it is.
Bottom line: tell your friends it’s ain’t true. Mars will be it’s normal self all year, with no gigantic apparitions of it looming over your head.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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August 25th, 2005 at 4:55 am
Oh yea, it’s big as the full moon alright. In fact, I looked at it just yesterday. Only thing I didn’t know is that the moon had shrunk this bad.
Why do people believe ridiculous things like that? :\
August 25th, 2005 at 5:36 am
I’ve been getting the occasional one, so I’ve just refered them to my Mars Opposition Page. I’ll add your Mars hoax page as a link in that page if I may.
August 25th, 2005 at 5:39 am
Okay, so I’m stupid, I kept getting error messages every time I tried posting, so now there are 4 copies of my post. Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa (did I do this once before?)
August 25th, 2005 at 6:14 am
Ok, Sky and Telescope and SpaceWeather websites state that:
Mars will not come any closer than 43 million miles at opposition in October and November 2005; that if you looked at Mars through a telescope of magnification of 100, then Mars would appear, in the telescope, to seem as large as a “naked eye” view of the Full Moon.
Anyone going out this week after 11 pm (0300 UTC) local time, you can see the reddish-orange Mars and the waning gibbous Moon.
August 25th, 2005 at 6:33 am
Yes this is truly wrong that masr will be as big as moon
read the correct article with latest information on mars here
http://www.exploreuniverse.com/astrolog
August 25th, 2005 at 10:07 am
It’s OK, Ian. I deleted the other posts.
August 25th, 2005 at 11:02 am
I finally got it emailed to me too and I set them straight!
Astronomy, I feel, needs to be taught but so does a course in critical thinking.
August 25th, 2005 at 11:08 am
Glad to see you’ve posted about this, Phil. I’ve been getting a lot of inquires about it to since I write an astronomy column for the local paper. (I’d be pleased if you’d look over the archive of past columns at my blog, http://starry-starry-nights.blogspot.com/ .) This Mars thing has gone from an email hoax to a blog hoax, too. I’ve been posting comments with the correct information, but it’s like tying to empty the sea with a five-gallon bucket.
Peace and clear skies!
August 25th, 2005 at 11:49 am
Looks good to me, Dave.
August 25th, 2005 at 12:23 pm
I got this one a couple of weeks ago from a friend that I had gone out observing with. It surprised me that he fell for it, so I sent a long reply setting things straight. I also included links to the BA’s page from 2003 and to a BABB discussion about it. I’ve also seen it a couple of times here at work, where folks had printed it out to give to family members. I set them straight too. It does seem that this hoax is growing. I know I never received the original email in ‘03.
Keep fighting the good fight!
August 26th, 2005 at 3:04 am
[…] OF THE SUPER MARS MEME. […]
August 26th, 2005 at 7:11 am
My wife’s irredeemably credulous EMail buddies have been hitting her with this one for several weeks now. Although she herself tends to fall into the “woo” camp more often than not, I have succeeded in teaching her how to use Snopes, to the point where many of the ULs she still receives from her friends are presented as questions (”Is this true?”), rather than as exclamations (”This is incredible!”)
If my wife’s friends were the only culprits, I could just shrug my shoulders and swallow my aggravation. Unfortunately, school’s back in session now, and the very first day, my 5th-grader came home with something “incredible” that her beloved science teacher told her….
August 26th, 2005 at 11:05 am
Wow, JUST WOW!!! Are people Really **THAT** Stupid?!?!?!? They actually believe this !*@#$%!!!!!
I don’t want people that stupid voting, driving, or even being out on the same street with me.
There needs to some sort of test to demonstrate your intelligent enough to participate in our society, and receive its generous benefits. Some knowledge of basic calculus, for example should be the bare minimum for passing. If you can’t find the derivative of X^3+X^2, you’re too stupid to drive! If you cannot name the first five Presidents of the USA, or demonstrate some knowledge on what our form of government was right after the Revolutionary War, or what form our government has today, you’re too stupid to vote. Some knowledge of the periodic table, and major world leaders, should also be required. To the masses who will ultimately fail the test and complain: T.S., life’s a @#$%!, then you die, get used to it.
We’ve been going down hill as a society ever since the peasants learned how to read and write!! Now they think they know everything!!!
/My hate all the Stupid-People rant is now over.
Seriously, I realized this was bogus the moment I was shown it by my room mate.
August 26th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
A freind of my wife’s sent this to us. I thought I saw this before. The first time around when I read it I thought,”Oh come one now”. It is very hard to believe that anyone would take this seriously. I guess it takes all kinds to make the world go around……..no…wait a minute…the world is square!
August 26th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Rob0112358 is right.
However, I suggest that I should be the final arbiter of what is adiquate intelligence. and I hearby decree that the enfranchised population shall be… Me! O.K., me and Dogbert.
August 26th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
It still remains a mistery why people believes all this incredible things, and yet, they’ll doubt about science reaching to the moon.
I Just wanted to thank you for this site, I love it, so I’ve decided to say Hello and go back to lurker mode again.
Greetings from Spain!
August 26th, 2005 at 11:27 pm
I think Rob0 is way off. Just because some people don’t know their science and history doesn’t mean they don’t have rights. Some people are amazing writers or artists and they don’t know a thing about science, they aren’t stupid. I especially liked how you feel everyone should know *American* history.
August 27th, 2005 at 3:28 am
RobO: You might want to know that the form of government that only the inteligent enough could be part of the decissions is quite old. Greek as a matter of fact. It ’s known as Aristocracy (sp?) and it’s father was Aristoteles. Needless to say all this happened before George Washington was a child, so I won’t blame you if you missed that part of history
I’d stick to democracy, it’s more advanced IMHO
August 27th, 2005 at 6:25 am
If you think it would be just fine to make people pass an intelligence test in order to “participate in our society and receive its generous benefits”, I’d suggest you’re missing something about American history that is more important than knowing the first five presidents.
August 27th, 2005 at 8:16 am
I’d also point out that something in the style and capitalization in this passage give it a slightly suspect air (to me at least):
“…astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.”
Critical thinking and a hoaxproof mentality have probably more to do with a certain attitude and perceptivity than any specific set of grains of knowledge..
August 27th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
I remember the ‘closest approach of Mars since cave men walked the Earth’, as it was put at the time, quite vividly. Of course, as most of you already know, it was nothing approaching the suggestions made here, even though most of the same claims were made at the time. Even to the naked eye, though, it was quite a vividly red sight, and unmistakably brilliant. Sensationalizing it doesn’t make it any more remarkable; in fact, I can imagine people going out to watch, and scoffing ‘that’s it?’ Not bothering to really take in the splendor of the event.
August 27th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
It’s weird how things like this circulate…
I missed the last apariation of mars, I’m looking foward to a full moon appearence…( at xmag)
Unfortunetly the full moon doesn’t look that big nacked eye in the first place…
August 30th, 2005 at 6:50 am
Hi Phill,
Your co-warrior against anti-science,
the thing got me pissed off so much that i STRATED by blogging using the same mail. Have a look at http://shas3n.blogspot.com/2005/08/misinformation-in-information-age.html
I even shamelessly borrowed from one of your blog entries on ID because i wanted to contribute my share for the google bombing against ID.
NS
September 1st, 2005 at 11:44 am
>It ’s known as Aristocracy and it’s father was Aristoteles
Sadly it’s never been tried. Plenty of ruling classes have called themselves aristocrats because it pleased their vanity and was a useful ‘mandate myth’ for them being in charge.
Wikipedia says that most historical arisocracies were heriditary plutocracies; in other words the power was held by the rich elite.
….now where does that remind me of?
September 25th, 2005 at 1:18 pm
This is really weird. I received that hoax email too and send replies back to check it out at snopes because it was NOT gonna appear that way. Talked to my older sister yesterday and she brought it up. She said did you go out and look?? Said she went out for several nights (midnight to 3 a.m. in Florida) before and after that date and it was huge. Said if the moon was the size of a half-dollar, Mars appeard as a quarter about 6-inches away. Said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and her husband saw it too. This is from a devout Christian who does not drink, smoke, do drugs or lie. I don’t know what to think about that. Sure has me stumped. I waited in line for four hours last time it was so close, to peer through a telescope at the local college along with many others. It was a dot with white on top even thru the strong telescope. Go figure..maybe you have to be a “true believer” to “see” it… I dunno
{{ shrug }}
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:51 pm
I got duped into believing Mars would be spectacular with a backyard telescope, I used a StarMax 127 Mak-Cass on three occasions, starting with a 25mm, Mars appeared as a pink salmon dot in the sky. I went through my other lenses including a 12.5, 9, and 6mm’s. The dot was a little larger, nothing “Spectacular”, no polar ice caps, no surface detail, just a whole lotta hype.
January 11th, 2006 at 11:29 am
[…] update : I am getting 3/4 hits from google for this particular post with pple searching for “mars as big as moon” and so on. Irrespective of whether these people believe this or not..the fact seems to be that this email is very popular ..so I appeal to u pple that u send a clarification to who ever sent you the original ‘wrong’ email. Also, good old BadAstronomy has a post on this. […]