Mars as large as the Mon in August?!

As summer approaches the annual Mars hoax does the rounds again.  It appears in the form of a PowerPoint attachment in an email entitled "Mars Spectacular", unfortunately no one knows were it originated from.It first appeared during the summer of 2004.

The email claims that on the night of 27 August, Mars will come closer to Earth than it has in the past 60,000 years, thereby offering spectacular views of the red planet.  It even claims that Mars will appear as large as the full moon.  Now that comment alone should be a give away.  How can Mars which is 189 million miles away from Earth appear as large as the Moon, which is 238,000 miles from Earth?  Despite Mars being larger (approximately 4,213 miles, or 6,780 km. in diameter) than the Moon (about 2,160 miles, or 3,475 km) because of it's great distance from Earth it's never going to appear as large as the Moon.

As summer approaches the annual Mars hoax does the rounds again.  It appears in the form of a PowerPoint attachment in an email entitled "Mars Spectacular", unfortunately no one knows were it originated from.It first appeared during the summer of 2004.

The email claims that on the night of 27 August, Mars will come closer to Earth than it has in the past 60,000 years, thereby offering spectacular views of the red planet.  It even claims that Mars will appear as large as the full moon.  Now that comment alone should be a give away.  How can Mars which is 189 million miles away from Earth appear as large as the Moon, which is 238,000 miles from Earth?  Despite Mars being larger (approximately 4,213 miles, or 6,780 km. in diameter) than the Moon (about 2,160 miles, or 3,475 km) because of it's great distance from Earth it's never going to appear as large as the Moon.

Mars has passed relatively close to Earth, but this happened on 27 April 2003.  The Hubble Space Telescope took some snap shots, but viewed from Earth, Mars still appeared as nothing more spectacular than a rather bright yellowish-orange star.

Mars is actually much dimmer this year no were near as noticable as it was in 2003.