A MARS CLOSE-UP

Weather permitting, you should be able to get a close look at Mars this week. The reddish planet is already the brightest object in the sky on a moonless night. And on Wednesday at 7:51 p.m. it will make its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years.

Astronomers say some telescopes should show the Martian south polar ice cap. They might also show its dusky orange landscape with dark green expanses of sand and rock. But don’t count on seeing Mars’s tiny moons, Phobos (fear) and Deimos (panic), only 14 and 18 miles in diameter respectively. Mars is half the size of our own planet.

Most scientists have pretty well given up hope of finding signs of life on Mars, although Heather Couper, the astronomer for the English newspaper The Independent says she expects a British unmanned spacecraft due on Mars on Christmas Day to report evidence of life there. Long, straight “canals,” once thought to be constructed, are now considered natural features. The bitter cold planet’s thin carbon dioxide atmosphere can’t retain any heat or water that may once have existed. Mars has the largest canyon in the solar system, 2,500 miles long. Also the tallest mountain, 17 miles high, covering an area the size of the British Isles.

Viewing should be good all week if the sky is clear. Colby College’s Collins Observatory in Waterville plans a public observance, with a variety of telescopes, from 9 p.m. to midnight on Tuesday, with a rain or cloud date of Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. The University of Maine’s observatory next o Memorial Union in Orono is open to he public from 9 to 11 p.m. every Friday in clear weather.

If the weather is bad early in the week, be persistent. The next close encounter by Mars will be in another 284 years.