This 80-second exposure was taken on March 7, 2001 from a location east of Auburn, CA. The planet Mars and the star Antares form an unlikely pair of twins, being approximately the same brightness and reddish color. While Mars has a diameter of just over half the Earth's diameter, Antares has a diameter big enough to contain Mars' orbit around the sun...with plenty of room to spare! On the day this photo was taken, Antares (at 604 light-years distant) was about 5.5 million times further from Earth than Mars was (at 106 million miles). Mars nears Antares in the sky about once every 2 years, and when I took this photo, they were at the closest they would get until July 19, later in the year. Click on the picture for a labeled version.



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