Earth Mars Oppositions and Conjunctions 2001-2010 Bob Albrecht & George Firedrake StarshipGaia@aol.com Ahoy, Teachers. Elsewhere we have suggested that you and your students model the motions of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars as they orbit the Sun during school year 2005-2006. You can find the information you need to do this is in the Solar System Backpack section of www.starshipgaia.net/bobgeorge/. Look for this file: Solar System Inner Planets 2005-09 to 2006-06 (SolSys_inner_200509_200606.pdf). This document is about oppositions and conjunctions of Earth and Mars 2001 to 2010. We are writing this in September 2005, so we will describe a future opposition and conjunction. On 2005-11-07 at UTC 08 (8:00 AM in Greenwich, England), Mars will be at opposition to Earth. Earth will be between the Sun and Mars. Mars will be opposite Earth from the Sun. You can draw a line segment from the Sun through the Earth to Mars print this page and do it. On 2006-10-23 at UTC 06 (6:00 AM in Greenwich, England), Mars will be at conjunction with respect to Earth. The Sun will be between Earth and Mars. You can draw a line segment from Earth through the Sun to Mars print this page and draw that line segment. The line segment from Earth to Mars touches Venus. Venus is nearing conjunction with Earth. That conjunction will occur 2006-10-27 at UTC 17 (5:00 PM in Greenwich, England). Earth-Mars Opposition 2005-11-07 UTC 08 November 07, 2005 Greenwich 08:00 Earth-Mars Conjunction 2006-10-23 UTC 06 October 23, 2006 Greenwich 06:00 Earth Mars Oppositions & Conjunctions 1 11/6/2005
To see where the planets are now or at any date and time you choose, go to Solar System Live: Solar System Live (http://www.fourmilab.ch/solar/solar.html) You will see: Welcome to Solar System Live, the interactive Orrery of the Web. You can view the entire Solar System, or just the inner planets (through the orbit of Mars). Controls allow you to set time and date, viewpoint, observing location, and a variety of other parameters. Click on inner planets to go to a page that shows the current positions of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. We went to Solar System Live and entered settings to obtain the diagrams in pages 1, 3, 4, and 5 of this document. Here is how we obtained the image for 2005-11-07 at UTC 08. Time: We clicked the radio button to the left of UTC and entered 2005-11-07 08:00:00. Show: We left it set to its default setting, Icons. Display: We made sure that it was set to Inner system. Stereo: We left it set at its default setting Cross. Size: We changed the size from 320 to 640. Orbits: We want real orbits, so we clicked on the radio button to the left of Real. Observing site: We entered Lat. 44.65 N and Long. 124.05 W for Newport, Oregon. Heliocentric: We left it set to the default selections Lat. 90 N, Long. 0 Hey, OK, everything is set our way, so we pressed the [Update] button and soon saw the diagram of the inner planets for 2005-11-07 at UTC 08:00:00 in Greenwich, England on the Prime Meridian (Longitude 0 ). We collected images of the inner planets for the five oppositions and four conjunctions during Earth years 2001 through 2010. They appear down yonder on pages 3, 4, and 5. The images are GIF files. We copied each Solar System Live image to the Clipboard, pasted it into Paint, and saved it to a folder called EarthMars_opp_con. We wrote this in Microsoft Word. To keep it small, we inserted each image into the Word document, and then reduced its size to 46% of the original image. Thus we were able to put four images on each page. On pages 3 5, you can find Earth Mars Oppositions and Conjunctions 2001 2010 2001-06-13 UTC 14 Opposition 2003-08-28 UTC 16 Opposition 2005-11-07 UTC 08 Opposition 2007-12-24 UTC 20 Opposition 2010-01-29 UTC 19 Opposition 2002-08-10 UTC 22 Conjunction 2004-09-15 UTC 12 Conjunction 2006-10-23 UTC 06 Conjunction 2008-12-05 UTC 22 Conjunction Enjoy these views of Earth and Mars close together (opposition) and far apart (conjunction). Earth Mars Oppositions & Conjunctions 2 11/6/2005
Earth-Mars Opposition 2001-06-13 UTC 14 June 13, 2001 Greenwich 14:00 Earth-Mars Conjunction 2002-08-10 UTC 22 August 08, 2002 Greenwich 22:00 Earth-Mars Opposition 2003-08-28 UTC 16 August 28, 2003 Greenwich 16:00 Earth-Mars Conjunction 2004-09-15 UTC 12 September 09, 2004 Greenwich 12:00 Earth Mars Oppositions & Conjunctions 3 11/6/2005
Earth-Mars Opposition 2005-11-07 UTC 08 November 07, 2005 Greenwich 08:00 Earth-Mars Conjunction 2006-10-23 UTC 06 October 23, 2006 Greenwich 06:00 Earth-Mars Opposition 2007-12-24 UTC 20 December 24, 2007 Greenwich 20:00 Earth-Mars Conjunction 2008-12-05 UTC 22 December 05, 2008 Greenwich 22:00 Earth Mars Oppositions & Conjunctions 4 11/6/2005
Earth-Mars Opposition 2010-01-29 UTC 19 January 29, 2010 Greenwich 19:00 End Earth Mars Oppositions & Conjunctions 5 11/6/2005