Is Mars clearly visible on August 27, 2009?

Answer

Answer from Frank Deboosere:

The Mars story is a fabrication, a hoax. In 2003, an email went around the world warning of the planet Mars, which would be the same size as the Full Moon on August 27, 2003.

Now the red planet did indeed come relatively “close” to Earth on that date, just under 56 million km. But compared to the distance from the Earth to the Moon (on average 384,000 km), the distance to Mars is much, much greater. Mars was a very bright red dot in the night sky around that time, but a comparison with the Full Moon really didn’t work: the Full Moon was about ten thousand times brighter.

Oddly enough, the hoax has popped up every two years since then. The creators of the hoax assume that Mars will be close to Earth again exactly every two years. And that’s not the case. Mars will not reach its closest distance to Earth on August 27, 2009, but on January 29, 2010. The red planet will then be at a respectable distance of just over 99 million km. You can see exactly what happens in this homemade video.

The story frightens many people. That is really not necessary. You better visit a public observatory if you want to learn something about the universe.

Also see
http://www.frankdeboosere.be/vragen/vragen117.html

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Answer from prof dr Paul Hellings

Personally, I see no reason to say that Mars would be very visible at the end of August. I don’t know where you got that message from.
Let us compare the situation of August 29 with that of December 27 :

brightness : on August 29 : m = 1.2, on December 27 : m = -1.5
so at the end of December 12 times brighter (the smaller m, the brighter; m is a logarithmic scale with base 2.5)

apparent diameter: on August 29: 5.8 arcseconds, at the end of December 12.2
so at the end of December twice the diameter (because of the distance which on 29/8 is 1.62 Astr.Units, and at the end of December only 0.77)

Rise/fall…
Visible at the end of August between midnight and 4:36 pm the next day
At the end of December between 8 pm and 11:31 am the following day,
so in December a larger part of the night.

Culmination: at the end of August, Mars rises in the south at 61° above the horizon at 8:22 am (so while it is already completely ready), at the end of December this is at 58° at 3:52 am, so really during the winter night

You see, if you want to observe Mars, you better wait until the end of the year, and even the first months of 2010, when conditions are better in every way.