Saturday October 7^th the outer planet planet Mars will be at aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun this time around. For this aphelion Mars will be 1.408 AU (210,633,802 km – 130,881,776 miles) from the Sun. The orbit of Mars is more elliptical than the Earth’s nearly circular shaped orbit and so it has a much wider range of aphelion and perihelion distances. Mars has an orbital eccentricity of 0.0935 compared with Earth’s 0.0167, and the length of a year on Mars is equal to 687 Earth days (1.88 Earth years).

Take a brief fly-over of Mars. Music by Dark Matter.

   Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information for this month.