This week is your best chance until 2025 to see the red planet

Mars is the closest it has been to Earth since 2003

When it gets dark tonight, cast your eye southwest to get the best view of Mars in 15 years.

“You can’t miss it,” said Ken Tapping, an astronomer at the National Research Council of Canada’s Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Kaleden.

“It’s like a brilliant red lamp in the sky. It’s spectacular and amazingly bright.”

While Tapping is effusive about Mars’ Áamboyance this July, he said the planet’s proximity is more an event for amateur astronomers than for professionals.

“Mars is the planet closest to Earth, so we now have spacecraft crawling all over it and all sorts of communication equipment orbiting it,” he said.

“For professional astronomers, this close encounter is not a very big deal.” However, he urges you to get an eyeful. “Certainly, you can see it as a red searchlight in the sky with the naked eye,” said Tapping.

“Or you can use binoculars for an even better view. But, if you happen to have a telescope, Mars is close enough that you’ll be able to see it has polar caps, rough, mountainous terrain and deserts.”

The best time to see Mars is between 10 p.m. and midnight, and it will be easy to spot next to the full moon.

Tapping also offered the explanation for how Mars received its “red planet” nickname.

“The ancient Romans saw it as the colour of blood and named it after their god of war, Mars,” he said.

Of course, Mars being the closest it has been since 2003 is all relative.

Currently, it’s clearly visible at some 55 million kilometres away.

When it’s on the other side of the sun, and out of sight of Earthlings, Mars is a mind-boggling 400 million kilometres in the distance.

While Mars has been showy all month, it will be closest and brightest on Friday.

Royal Astronomical Society of Canada educator, speaker and columnist Gary Boyle calls Mars’ July 27 nearness “the biggest celestial event of the year.”

He pointed out that Mars gained modern panache in 1877 when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli claimed he saw canals on the planet.

That suggested other artiÀcial structures on Mars and a possible civilization that built them.

That started a fascination that led to science Àction writers and movie makers having a Àeld day with space aliens and Martians.

Billionaire tech titan and Tesla electric car founder Elon Musk is amping up the Mars enthusiasm.

He’s building a spaceship that will do test Áights next year with an eye to sending a cargo mission to Mars in 2022.

Cargo and crew could make it to the red planet in 2024.

Then a one-way trip, which would take seven months, could be attempted in January 2025, when Mars is closest to the Earth again, to take more cargo and people in an attempt to colonize Mars.

Musk’s SpaceX project ultimately sees a selfsustaining city on Mars, most likely under a climate-controlled dome in which people can survive and food can be grown and raised.

Mars isn’t the only otherworldly show this month.

Tapping encourages you to spy the whitish glow of Jupiter to the southwest near the moon.

If you have binoculars or a telescope, you might even be able to make out that the largest planet in our solar system has four moons of its own.

Look west at twilight near the horizon to see a crescent of Venus still partially lit by the sun.

A glance low and southward might reveal ringed-Saturn, sixth planet from the sun, in a golden hue.