If you read the email carefully the actually sentence reads :

At a modest
75-power magnification
Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

ie. to the naked eye Mars looks like a star, but when magnified only 75
times
looks similar to the size of the full moon with the naked eye. That's how
I understood it anyway !

Mars = 25 arc seconds
Moon = 31 arc minutes
Mars X75 = 1875 arc seconds = approx 31 arc minutes

so the email from Gavin contains an accurate statement just badly formatted.

Martin


Nick G wrote in message
...
Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

Absolute nonsense!

It will appear as nothing more than a very bright, pinkish star to the
naked
eye.
__________________
Nick G
Thorverton, Exe Valley, Devon
50 m amsl

"Gavin Staples" wrote in message
...
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!



This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter
that
will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in
recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is
in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on
Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be
certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth
in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as
60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when
Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and
will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in
the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9
and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest
75-power magnification





Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.



Does anyone know about this. I got this in an email from a freind of
mine
from Japan.




--
Gavin Staples.

Horseheath. Cambridge, UK. 93m ASL.
House to Let. For details see on my website.
www.gavinstaples.com
All outgoing emails are checked for viruses by Norton Internet Security
2005.

"Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute". ~Josh Billings