Brightest Mars due to ‘opposition’

Due to an event referred to as “opposition”, which takes place every two years and two months, Mars will outshine Jupiter, becoming the third brightest object (moon and Venus are first and second, respectively) in the night sky during the month of October.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2020

Key-Points

This year, while Mars’ closest approach to Earth was on October 6, the opposition happened on October 13, which will give the planet its “biggest, apparent size of the 2020s”, according to NASA.

Opposition is the event when the sun, Earth and an outer planet (Mars in this case) are lined up, with the Earth in the middle.

The time of opposition is the point when the outer planet is typically also at its closest distance to the Earth for a given year, and because it is close, the planet appears brighter in the sky.

An opposition can occur anywhere along Mars’ orbit, but when it happens when the planet is also closest to the sun, it is also particularly close to the Earth.