Week of Jan. 17 -- 23, 2010 by Dennis Mammana on Creators.com

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Week of Jan. 17 -- 23, 2010

During late January, go outdoors and cast your gaze toward the eastern sky after dark. There, you'll see some of the most brilliant stars of the year — those of the winter sky. If the glistening lights of the constellations Orion, Canis Major, Auriga and Taurus aren't enough to dazzle you, this year, they'll be joined by an even more radiant jewel: the Red Planet, Mars.

Now glowing at its brightest, Mars appears this month against the stars of the constellation Cancer, the crab. Of course, the planet resides trillions of miles nearer than the stars and only appears along the same line of sight.

Mars reaches its official "opposition" on Jan. 29. Opposition, you might recall, is when a planet lies closest to the Earth. It is around this time that it appears to drift westward through the stars for a few months, then drifts back eastward again through the same stars.

In order to understand why this happens, we must imagine viewing Earth, Mars and the sun from space. Each day, we on Earth move 1.5 million miles along our orbit around the sun. Mars, orbiting farther from the sun's gravitational pull, travels more slowly.

This means that, every 26 months or so, the Earth catches up with Mars from behind, passes it on the "inside" and then gradually pulls ahead of it.

You can think of it as two race cars on concentric circular tracks. If the inner car is traveling faster, it will regularly "lap" the outer car and make the outer car seem to go backward for a short time.

One easy way to track this planetary motion yourself is by making a sketch of the constellation Cancer and then, from week to week, mark Mars' position relative to its stars. It won't be very long before you begin to see the planet's motion.

Now is also a perfect time to aim a small backyard telescope in the direction of the Red Planet. If you don't own your own 'scope, you can visit your local planetarium or amateur astronomy club for a remarkable view of this alien world.

Unless a planet-wide dust storm kicks up (as they're sometimes known to do on Mars), even a 3- or 4-inch diameter instrument should reveal the planet's dark surface features among the red Martian sands and, perhaps, even one of its white polar ice caps gleaming in the sunlight.

To find out more about Dennis Mammana and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.