Mars is less than six hours away from its closest encounter with Earth in nearly 60,000 years, and I just got back from taking a look at its much-brighter-than-usual disc shining in the sky over Washington Heights. The Red Planet is so bright, it doesn’t really look red at all to the naked eye — it actually looks quite a lot like Venus, as you can see in the photo above.

Anyway, here’s a picture of Mars over the apartment building across the street from mine:

And here’s a shot of Mars from the roof of my apartment building — which I’m not technically supposed to go on, but I make exceptions when there’s a citywide blackout or a one-in-a-millennium celestial event. :)

Unfortunately, I just found out that the Mars-gazing event on Staten Island that I was planning to attend tomorrow night is sold out. D’oh! I think there’s something at South Street Seaport later in the week, so I might go to that instead. But whatever, even if I don’t get to peer at it through a telescope, at least I saw Mars with my own eyes (and took pictures of it) on the historic night.

UPDATE: Yup, I found it here: “See Mars at the South Street Seaport, August 29th, Pier 17 at 9PM. Weather permitting.” That’s Friday, and weather may indeed be an issue, but we shall see.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In addition to those statistics that I posted Monday, CNN adds this tidbit: “The nearest terrestrial place to Mars at [5:51 AM] was Tahiti, according to astronomers.”