As many of you know the planet Mars has been closer to earth recently than it has been or will be for thousands of years. This situation has set off a flurry of interest in the heavens. I, like many, many other people (about 750), showed up at the Harvard Telescope on August 27th, 2003 to get a better look at Mars.

I was one of the fortunate ones, because I obtained a ticket that included the lecture and the viewing from the roof afterward. I had a good view of Mars using the telescope on the roof. I report here what I learned at the lecture.

The "ecliptic" is a line drawn across the sky tracking the path of the Sun across the background of stars (if you could see them when the sun is up). All of the planets, except Pluto, are found very close to this line. Pluto's difference is one reason why many scientists question categorizing it as a planet. To them, it's more of an asteroid.

The word planet means wanderer in Greek. The ancients noted that some "stars" moved from night to night with respect to most stars; they "wandered" around in the sky. The ancients gave the planets fanciful names relating to love and war and attributed to them the ability to affect our lives. Of course, distant celestial bodies like planets can have no physical effect on us. We now know that these odd "stars" don't shine like real stars, but shine by sunlight reflected from their surfaces just as the Moon does. The relative position of each planet to ourselves and to the sun varies from night to night.

Running parallel to the ecliptic is the zodiac, an array of twelve constellations encompassing the entire 360-degree circle of the ecliptic. The Ptolemys, Greeks who ruled Egypt from 300 BC to 50 AD, had a school at Alexandria. This group of "scientists" divided the zodiac into 12 equal pieces of 30 degrees each (360/12 = 30). This means that only about half of the circle is visible at any given time. They had a theory that individuals are influenced by the zodiac sign where the Sun is located at birth. If you look in the night sky on your birthday you will not see your sign because it is 180 degrees around the world where the Sun is shining. The Sun is right on top of it. You are thus born over your sign and not under your sign if you are born at night.

I did learn a lot about Mars and saw some fascinating pictures from the Hubble and other orbiting telescopes. Mars is a very bleak place that is very cold. The atmosphere is very thin and mostly CO₂. It is not the kind of place we humans could or would like to live.

As you can see, I went there to learn more about Mars, the God of War, and learned a great deal about Astronomy 101.