Mars Hoax

It's the time of year when the 'Mars as big as the moon' hoax will be doing the rounds. The Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers have been combating this myth since 2005. The composite image above (click the image to enlarge it) has two images of Mars pasted to the left of the moon - the images were taken by myself and are at the same scale. The large image is the size Mars was during it's close approach to Earth in August 2003. The small image is the size Mars was in June/July of this year - a close approach occurs every 15-17 years. Mars is never any bigger than it is shown here ie it is never the size of the moon.

There is more information about Mars and the Mars hoax on the Old Town Astronomers website http://www.otastro.org/Mars2005/.