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Every 779.94 days or so, the planet Mars
reaches opposition
- the point where the Earth lies directly between it and the Sun. For
amateur and professional astronomers alike this is of some
significance as it coincides with when Mars is at its closest to Earth
and so it appears both large and bright in the sky. This year, the
opposition of Mars will occur on the 13th of October 2020 (take a
moment to see it for yourself - Mars will rise towards the east just
after sunset). To mark this event, and to add to the bucket list
of Solar
System objects observed with ASKAP, we pointed the telescope in
the direction of Mars for about 8 hours. The animation above shows 12
minute snapshots of part of the sky seen
by ASKAP
over the course of the observation. Can you guess which of the objects
in the animation is Mars? If you guessed the moving one then you're
right! Even over just a few hours Mars can be seen to move. The word
"planet" itself is derived from
an ancient Greek word
meaning "wanderer" so Mars is certainly playing its part. The other
objects in the image are not stars, if fact, they are very distant
radio galaxies (100's of millions, if not billions of light years
away) - each powered by
a supermassive
black hole.
(Image Credit: E. Lenc & V. A. Moss (CSIRO))
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