Mars is So Bright Right Now You Can Shoot Its Reflection in the Ocean

Mars is closer to Earth and brighter than its been since back in 2003. It’s so bright that photographer Abdul Dremali managed to capture this photo of the planet casting a bright reflection on the ocean as it rose into the night sky.

Mars will be the closest to Earth later this month — it’ll appear about 1.8 times brighter than Jupiter in the sky — and it won’t be this close to Earth or this bright in the sky again until 2035.

“The 2018 Perihelic Apparition of Mars will prove to be one of the most favorable since the 2003 apparition when the Red Planet came closest to Earth in 59,635 years (the year 57,617 B.C.),” ALPO writes. “Of the 56 oppositions of Mars from February 22, 1901 through July 27, 2018, only 15 can be considered as favorable apparitions.”

So if you’d like to try your hand at capturing photos of an ultra-bright Mars in night-sky photos, you have a short window to do so over the next several days. Good luck!

Image credits: Photographs by Abdul Dremali and used with permission