Two years ago in August Mars made a very close approach to the Earth, astronomically speaking. At that time Mars was about 35 million miles from Earth--the closest approach in 60,000 years. I went to our local astronomy club's public star party on the night of closest approach and looked at the planet through telescopes and video cameras and it was all pretty nerdy and cool.

This year, for some reason, an email is circulating that claims that the close approach is this August. Okay, so they're only two years off. No big deal, just hit delete and shake your head at how silly email forwards can be.

Over time, however, the email has mutated into complete bogus craziness. Back in June I got an email that seemed to make the claim that Mars would look as big as the full Moon to the unaided eye. Here's a snippet from the email in question:

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification

Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

You see the the confusion? There's an errant paragraph break in the middle of a sentence that makes it sound like Mars will be as big as the Moon to the naked eye. A small typing mistake, but it had big consequences.

Now the emails are unambiguously claiming that Mars will appear as big as the full Moon on August 27th of this year. Candleblog pal (and avid birder) Susan S. got an email this morning from a co-worker that actually had a picture of Mars side by side with the Moon.

Some people should be slapped.

An image of Susan's credulous email is below the fold.