People hope for great Mars sights

With all the buzz about Mars in the news lately – how the planet will be closer to the Earth on Aug. 27 than it’s been in nearly 60,000 years – I figured there’d be a run on telescopes down at the Wal-Mart in the next two weeks.

I was tempted to get one myself, actually, so I wouldn’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime celestial event that has the astronomical community in Maine and the rest of the country eagerly making party plans for the big night. While I never expected to spot Martian life forms moving around up there, I thought I might at least get a peek at one of the planet’s many volcanoes I’ve heard so much about. After all, the last Earthlings to get so intimate a glimpse of the Red Planet were Neanderthals, who presumably didn’t have the brainpower to appreciate what they were staring at. And considering that the planet wouldn’t be this close to us again for another 284 years, the only way I’d get another chance is if I were to have myself cryogenically frozen like Ted Williams, leaving instructions that I be thawed out and reanimated in time for the spectacle on Aug. 28, 2287.

But when I went up to the University of Maine to ask an expert’s advice on my planet-gazing plans, Alan Davenport gently but firmly brought me back down to Earth.

“I would definitely not tell someone to rush out and buy a telescope just for this particular event,” said Davenport, the director of the Maynard F. Jordan Planetarium. “Even though Mars will be as close to us in two weeks as it will ever be, it’s still going to be more than 34 million miles away.”

In other words, he said, a department store telescope simply wouldn’t cut it.

“Even with a good telescope,” he said, “you’d still only see Mars as a tiny red dot. Those detailed pictures you see in the newspaper? They are not what you’re going to get with a backyard telescope.”

But if the night sky is clear, he said, it might be possible for amateur stargazers to see some large-scale weather phenomenon occurring on Mars – perhaps a massive dust storm covering a quarter of the planet, or the vast dark soil formations of Syrtis Major, or maybe even the bright reflection from a polar ice cap.

“But you’d never see such surface detail as a volcano on Mars,” he said, “not even Olympus Mons, which is 17 miles high and the largest volcano in the solar system. ”

Nevertheless, Davenport is delighted that Mars is creating at least a brief stir among folks outside the professional and amateur astronomical community. Then again, he said, Mars has always had the power to fire our imaginations like no other planet.

“In astronomy, Mars is the epitome of seduction,” he said.

Not only does it have features that appear to change, but its appealing color begs our attention. The Ancients named the blood-red planet after their god of war. Percival Lowell, a Boston astronomer, teased the public imagination at the turn of the century with his theory – later disproved – that there was an intricate network of canals on Mars and that the structures suggested the strong likelihood of intelligent life. Science fiction writers, of course, have long made Mars the epicenter of their fanciful tales.

“For backyard astronomers, this will be an opportunity for the best possible observation of Mars they’ll ever get,” Davenport said. “But I’d much rather it wasn’t just a once-in-a-lifetime event like this that makes people go outside and enjoy the night sky.”