Mars shines bright on Christmas Eve

Christmas is a time for gifts and surprises and this time even nature did not fall behind in showering a beautiful gift of bright shining Mars followed by a full moon on the Christmas Eve.

"It's only 55 million miles away, which makes it brighter than the brightest star in the sky on Christmas Eve," said Jack Horkheimer, the director of Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium astronomer.

People believe this might give Santa a chance to rest Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It is a popular Christmas story about Santa Claus's ninth and lead reindeer that possesses an unusually red-colored nose that gives off its own light, powerful enough to illuminate the team's path through inclement weather.

The reason Mars was so bright and red was that it was directly opposite to the sun and fairly close to Earth, thus reflecting most of the light that fell on it. As the Earth and Mars have different orbital speeds and periods around the sun, this takes place every 25 and a half months. The phenomenon is called “the opposition.”

Because of the astronomical geometry of opposition, Mars rises at sunset and sets at sunrise just like a full moon, and the two planets are at their minimum distance from each other in that two-year cycle. However, since the orbits of Mars and the sun are not exactly circular but more elliptical or oval-shaped, not all minimum opposition distances are the same. Some are closer than others.

The astronomers believe that Mars won’t shine so brightly for the next nine years. It won't be so large or luminous again until 2016, and it won't take as high a path across the sky until 2040.

It was a brilliant red light in the sky.

Earlier on 18th December, it came very close to earth and a picture was taken by The Hubble Space Telescope but astronomers had said that it will be brighter on Christmas Eve because of its position opposite the sun.

Right next to Mars, was a beautiful full moon and they both tracked across the sky together all night long until sunrise.

It was also a good opportunity for the astronomers who observed the change in the arrangement of the surface features of Mars as our red planetary neighbor rotated on its axis in 24 hours and 40 minutes, a little slower than our Earth.