Close encounter with Mars excites stargazers

The last time Mars came this close to Earth, our ancestors were living in caves and struggling to make basic tools out of rocks.

A mere 60,000 years later, thousands of people around the world were using a vast array of high-tech digital and optical equipment on Wednesday to observe the red planet as it passes.

From the shores of Tahiti in Polynesia to outback Australia and Japan, amateur and professional stargazers aimed their telescopes at the eastern sky for a close encounter with Mars.

At 9.51pm NZT last night, Mars passed just 55.76 million km from Earth, making it the closest such encounter since the Stone Age.

Hundreds of stargazers lined up outside the Sydney Observatory as dark fell, eager to look through some of about 10 telescopes set up in the observatory's grounds.

"This is only once in a lifetime that I can see another planet ... it's really great," stargazer Rebecca Horton told Reuters Television.

Sydney's harbourside observatory was bathed in red light to celebrate the passing of the mysterious planet, clearly visible to the naked eye as a bright, twinkling dot.

"We wanted it a little bit bigger," a young schoolgirl named Victoria told local radio after watching Mars with her family from a Sydney beach.

The last time Mars came nearer was around Sept 12 in 57,617BC when it passed about 55.72 million km away.

However, Wednesday will not be the last opportunity for a good look at the planet.

"It makes no real practical difference whether you look at Mars tonight or ... next week. It doesn't move that fast and is going to stay bright for some time," said Dr Dave Laney, an astronomer at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town.

After that, though, you'll have to wait 284 years for another close encounter.

The US-based Planetary Society has declared August 27 "Mars Day." Its website (http://planetary.org/marswatch2003) details global events from official viewings from observatories in Sydney and Beijing to desert star parties in places like Jordan.

Some of the best viewing will be in the southern hemisphere: from isolated tiny South Pacific islands like Tahiti, which is thought to be the closest point to Mars, and outback Australia, where a lack of pollution from city lights means the planet will shine bright red in the night sky.

Australia's Siding Springs Observatory, around 400km northwest of Sydney, beamed images of Mars from its 61-cm telescope onto a large screen at the local Coonabarabran community hall.

In South America, one of the world's most prized stargazing sites is at Chile's Elqui Valley because of clear skies due to low humidity and no clouds. Dozens of people lined up to look through one of the eight telescopes at the Mamalluca amateur observatory there.

"I feel so privileged to be here right at this moment," one woman told Chilean television.

Mars, looking like a large orange star, has been appearing in recent days above the towering Andean mountain range at night.

Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, used the planet's proximity to enliven a speech hailing a government agreement on salaries and bonuses for civil servants.

"You could say that the planet Mars is going to give a kiss to the Earth," said the left-wing leader.

Chavez proposed that his bonus plan should be called the "Mars Mission."

While Mars came the closest it has been to Earth since the Stone Age, man's long-held dream of landing on the planet remains as far away as ever.

Hope that life exists, or at least existed, on Mars still persists. Recent Nasa probes have sent back images suggesting water once flowed on or near the Martian surface. Water is seen as a prerequisite for life on other planets.

The red planet has always fired the human imagination.

Mars was the god of war in Roman mythology and the planet made good copy for early science fiction, such as Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. When Orson Welles broadcast The War of the Worlds, H G Wells' story of a Martian invasion, many of his radio listeners were terror-stricken.

Fortune tellers, looking for clues in the sky to the future of an uncertain world, say that little good is likely to come from Wednesday's close encounter.

Pointing to bloodshed and violence in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, or to a rash of terror attacks, the latest of which killed more than 50 people in Bombay on Monday, they predict disasters, both natural and man-made.

"Violence will increase as people will be less patient and get angry quickly," Vineet Jain, a leading New Delhi-based astrologer, told Reuters.

- REUTERS