Mars tonight

Tonight in London

How to find it

Mars shows as a reddish, steady point, but its brightness changes more than any other planet's, from barely noticeable to brighter than Jupiter. The Earth catches up with it every 26 months, at opposition: Mars is then closest, brightest and up all night. For a few weeks around opposition it seems to move backwards against the stars, the same optical effect as passing a slower car.

The nearest bright signpost now is Pollux: Mars is 12° from it, a few binocular fields away. Light takes 14 minutes to reach the Earth from the planet now.

When it shows over the next 12 months

Mars is in the evening sky 13 Feb – 5 Aug, and in the morning sky 5 Oct – 15 Mar. Brightest on 19 Feb (−1.2), closest to the Earth on 19 Feb, 101 million km.

Month by month

On the 15th of each month: when the planet rises and sets, its brightness, constellation and distance from the Earth.

Key dates

The outer planets are best at opposition, when the Earth is between them and the Sun, and hidden for a few weeks around conjunction with the Sun.

Mars oppositions 2018–2035

Distance, disc size and brightness at each opposition. Mars has an elongated orbit, so some oppositions are nearly twice as close as others: Mars was very close in 2018 and will be again in 2035, but far in 2027.

The Moon next to the planet

Every month the Moon passes Mars, the easiest way to find the planet. The next close passes:

Where the planet is in the Solar System

The view from above: the Sun in the centre, orbits scaled down. Today Mars is 244 million km from the Earth; over the year the distance ranges from 101 million km to 312 million km.

What kind of planet

Mars is about half the size of the Earth, and its red colour comes from iron oxide, plain rust, in its dust. It has the largest known volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, about 22 km high, the 4,000 km canyon system of Valles Marineris and ice caps at the poles. A day is almost like ours, 24 h 37 min; a year lasts 687 days, and its tilted axis gives it seasons. The air is very thin, yet dust storms sometimes wrap the whole planet.

In binoculars

In binoculars Mars is a bright orange dot with no detail, but they show well how it slides past the surrounding stars over a few nights. It is worth watching when Mars passes the Pleiades or the Beehive cluster in Cancer.

In a telescope

What a telescope shows depends on how close opposition is: around opposition the disc reaches 14–25″, and from about 150× a white polar cap and dark surface areas such as Syrtis Major appear. Between oppositions the disc shrinks to 4–5″ and shows almost nothing. A red or orange filter brings out detail, and during dust storms the surface can "vanish" for weeks.

Exploration

Mariner 4 sent the first close pictures of Mars in 1965. Viking 1 and 2 landed in 1976, and the first rover, Sojourner, in 1997. Opportunity drove from 2004 to 2018, Curiosity has worked since 2012, and Perseverance has been collecting rock samples for a future return to the Earth since 2021; the Ingenuity helicopter that came with it made 72 flights. China's Zhurong rover also landed in 2021.

Name and history

The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war, for its blood colour. Its two small, irregular moons Phobos and Deimos (Greek for "Fear" and "Dread") were discovered in 1877 by the American astronomer Asaph Hall. In the late 19th century some astronomers believed they saw "canals" on Mars; they turned out to be an optical illusion, but they started countless stories of Martians.

Facts

Other planets