By The Way...

Just a quick note for all of you: If you're not looking up at Mars this week, you're going to kick yourself for the rest of your days. Mars is as close to the Earth this week as it's been in 60,000 years, or will be again for thousands of years. It's not so close that you can touch it (it's still more than 34 million miles away), but it feels close, because it's so big and red and sparkly in the night sky ("sparkly," of course, being a technical astronomy term -- you'd never know I actually wrote an astronomy book this year, would you?).

Here are some Mars links for you:

Animated Mars movie taken from some guy's telescope at home. Very cool.

Space.com has a pretty comprehensive site for people who want to know about Mars and how to find it in the night sky over the next few days.

NASA wants you to tell it where the Mars Global Surveyor should take pictures as it approaches the planet. And don't ask for more pictures of the "Face on Mars." That's so over.

What to pack for a Mars vacation. This is written by some total loser.

Hey, if any of you take pictures of Mars, let me know -- I'd love to post links to cool amateur pictures of the planet. Addresses to send links to: JMSJournal for AOLers, JMSJournal2@aol.com for everyone else.

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• #1 Comment from sogroovyidigme 
  8/25/03 12:54 PM | Permalink

  Considering that recent astronomy book, I've been waiting for you to mention something about Mars. I've been looking at it for a month or so (however long it's been so very visible.) Awesome!