Panorama Photo

If you want to admire planet Mars in full glory, coming days are the time to do so because on July 27th, opposition will be reached. This means that Earth will be exactly inbetween the Sun and Mars. Such a situation happens every 2 years and 50 days. At opposition Mars is nearest, or almost nearest, to Earth and consequently looks biggest and brightest. Because the orbits of most planets are elliptical and are not exactly in the same plane around the sun, the distance differs from opposition to opposition and so the brightness.
Coming opposition will be the nearest since 2003 when the planet was at the closest position to Earth in 59,635 years. In 2003 the distance was 55.7 million km and on July 27th it will be 57.7 million km. To be correct, the shortest distance not always coincides with the day of opposition. This year closest approach is on July 31st.
Look around midnight or early in the morning in the SE to S to see very bright orange Mars.
To the right on the pano one can also recognize planet Saturn just above the Teapot stars. Please go to previous pano 23831 for additional explanation.

Canon Eos M6 with EF-M 18-150 mm, 8 pics RAW, 18 mm (28.8 mm KB), iso 400, f 5.6, 13 s, PTGuiPro, 14187x3659 209.1 MB TIFF, no crop, downsized 1800>1000>500 TIFF>sharpening> 2003x500 721 KB JPEG