Mars is Getting Brighter?

An article posted today on Timesnet.net reported that Ray Bloomer (above), the head of astronomy at King College has evidence that Mars is getting brighter. Bloomer said that Mars will continue to get brighter into December. Mars is 85 million miles away from us, but due to gravitational shifts, it has been closer to us than the Sun since last month. “Beginning September 26th it began coming closer, and it is going to stay in relative proximity to (Earth) until the close of the year,” said Bloomer. “The problem right now is (Mars) doesn’t come up into the night sky until about 10:30 p.m. or later,” Bloomer said. “It won’t reach its highest point in the sky until about 5 in the morning, so for those people who stay up late or get up early to go to work, they’ll have a bright, red star to look at.” Come December 9, Mars will be the brightest star in the sky. “If you think about runners running around a track, the people on the inside lane are going to lap a little faster, and so the people on the inside lane are going to overtake the people on the outside. The same thing is happening with Mars,” he said. “It is outside in an outer lane. It’s about one and half times the distance from the sun that we are, so as a result, we catch up with it and pass it every so often, a little more than a year. We are going to be just a little closer this time.” Bloomer claims that on December 18th, Mars will be only 55 million miles away from us. Mars will be this close to us again in 2014, based on the fact that this shift happens every 26 months.