Mars gives a Bright Shines to notice Christmas

Beginning in the month of November, from roughly the 7th, Mars started moving retrograde through the skies, at least relative to Earth.

What you'll see is that Mars has apparently reversed direction in the sky for a bit, moving to the east instead of to the west for 7 weeks, as it grows gradually brighter, and its visible disk increases by a factor of 8.
5 months to complete one orbit, versus 12.
Imagine a clock, the two circles printed on them, marked by a 1 to 12 and marked 1 to 24, with half of a Tick.
In the time it takes Mars to make one circumference, the Earth makes two.
This means that, like a second hand sweeping past the hour and minute hands, it reaches Mars, the direction is away from the sun, and then passes the.
This "catch up and pass" mechanism is what makes Mars appear to stop and suddenly move retrograde in the sky, from the frame of reference of the moving Earth, that's what's happening.
This period when the Earth is Mars is the closest approach to Mars, and is considered    opposition (because of the sun and Mars are on opposite sides of the Earth.)
During this period, the distance to Mars can be as low as 0.


For amateur astronomers, what this means is that Mars' visual diameter will be as large as it's going to get for the next nine years.
Right now, Mars is slated to get to almost 16 arc seconds (Saturn gets to about 18 arc seconds).
8, making it brighter than any star in the heavens, and only a little dimmer than Jupiter.
What you see, you can see the bright orange-red color with the naked eye and with telescope dignity (3 inches or more), you should be able to enable sharing of data on the surface.
In Mars Northern Hemisphere, you'll be able to make out some dark smudges for Syrtis Major, and in the Southern Hemisphere, you'll find Solis Lacus if you have very sharp eyes.
10"; or better telescopes may be able to see some of the effects of    Martian atmosphere " to  ; " board  ; around the globe.
In general, you'll want to limit magnification to about 35x per inch (25 mm) of telescope diameter, to avoid optical illusions.
If you use the filters, a blue filter to be good, drag the features of the cloud, and a red or orange filter to improve the contrast of the surface properties.


The brightest viewing day for Mars will be December 23/24/25th, when it's at Opposition.


You'll be able to see it in the mid-to late evening, in the constellation Taurus, at about 20 degrees north of the celestial equator.
nightskysecrets.


Happy Mars hunting.