New hi-def images from Mars

[Jackalope]

Why wouldn't you? You can easily see Mars from Earth, and Earth is substantially brighter than Mars (being both larger, and on average twice as refective).

I've never seen Mars from the Earth

You probably have and didn't know it.

When it's visible high in the night sky, it's often one of the brightest things visible (behind the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter). Even when it's not optimally placed, it's still pretty bright.

[Reforged]

You think anyones ever rubbed one out and ejected it into space?
Imagine how badly the person whos helmet that collided with would shit themselves.

[Cyberman]

I've never seen Mars from the Earth

I'll bet you any money you like that you have, without realising it was a planet. It's one of the most prominently visible of the planets, alongside Jupiter and Venus. To the untrained eye it can be hard to distinguish between a planet and a star, both being spots of light in the sky. However, whereas a star appears as a point of light, a planet, being much closer, presents a visible disc. Mars has a definite and distinctive reddish-white glow.

[Edit: Whoops, beaten to the punch. Must type faster.]

[Norfolk And Chance]

Why wouldn't you? You can easily see Mars from Earth, and Earth is substantially brighter than Mars (being both larger, and on average twice as refective).

I've never seen Mars from the Earth

You ain't been looking very hard mate!

[Haydn2]

Ask and you shall receive:

Awesome , cheers mate.

[Jackalope]

I've never seen Mars from the Earth

You ain't been looking very hard mate!

Indeed... on any given night, the brightest "stars" you can see are probably not stars. When visible, Venus is always substantially brighter than the brightest star (Sirius), Jupiter slightly to much brighter, Mars ranges from not as bright as the brightest to much brighter, and Saturn is usually nearly as bright as the brightest stars. (LOL, subjectively qualifying brightness ain't that easy.)

Mercury is usually too low in the sky to be confused with a planet, Uranus is difficult to see under the best of conditions (and otherwise impossible), and Neptune and Pluto are never visible to the naked eye.

One way to tell the difference between stars and planets - most nights, stars noticebly "twinkle" from atmospheric disturbance. Because planets have a larger angular size, they are less susceptible to disturbance and appear to twinkle noticibly less.

[Napoléon]

When out night fishing on a clear night there is always this one star that outshines the others. Perhaps this is Mars?

[Cyberman]

Either that or Jupiter. Maybe Venus, which can outshine Jupiter when it's at opposition. Does this star appear as a twinkling point or does it look more like a solid disc? If the latter, does it shine with a faint but discernible red light? If yes to both, then it's Mars.

[Jackalope]

When out night fishing on a clear night there is always this one star that outshines the others. Perhaps this is Mars?

Could be, depends on the date/time and what part of the sky it was in.

If it was REALLY bright compared to the others, it could be Venus. In middle northern latitudes, visible planets are always going to be somewhere in a band stretching from east to west, with the highest point in the southern sky.

Next time you're out, make a note of the time and rough location in the sky (compass direction and altitude). If you know what constellation it's in, that helps too. With that information, it's pretty easy to figure out what it was. Or, if you know you're going out, there's charts you can get online that will show you were things are going to be.

[Anomalocaris]

When out night fishing on a clear night there is always this one star that outshines the others. Perhaps this is Mars?

Mars is not the brightest body in the sky. Venus and Jupiter often outshine it by a large margin. But if seen alone, it can appear quite bright.

1. Mars is visibly red, so if you are not color blind, and the star does not appear red, then it is not Mars.

2. Mars is a planet with a resolvable disk, so in anything but the most turbulent air, it shouldn't twinkle. If it twinkles, it is not Mars.

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Surprised you can even see Earth.

In theory, earth is so bright in Martian sky that our instruments should be able to see Mars from earth purely by the reflected light (as well as radiowaves) from earth. In real life the glare of the sun makes that impossible to actually do.

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Really? We can see Mars from Earth, even in moderately light-polluted skies. Earth is almost twice the size of Mars and the Martian sky has no light pollution. Shouldn't be all that surprising.

Plus earth is 70% the distance from the sun as mars, so receive more than twice as much sun light per unit area as mars, plus the earth is twice as reflective as Mars, plus the disk of the earth is 4 times as large the disk of mars, means earth ought to be about 20 times as bright in the Martian sky as mars would be in the earth sky.

Plus Mars has hardly any atmosphere and little atmospheric extinction, unlike the earth, unless a martian duststorm is blowing.

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This is really cool , im looking forward to more . But i am also interested in seeing pictures of the Earth/Sun and ther celestial bodys from the perspective of Mars .
Its a shame its 2 moons are too small for a solar eclipse , but i wonder what other phenomena it experiances and would be great to capture it .

You might want to google "Pale blue dot" and look for panaramic composite photo of the entire solar system with all 8 planets, taken by the Voyager 1 space craft as it looked back towards the earth one last time before shutting down its cameras for good, shortly after crossing the approximate heliocentric distance of the orbit of pluto.

Here you see a view of every planet in solar system from the perspective of just outside the traditional boundary of solar system. Pale blue dot refers to earth. Carl Sagan would wax lyrical (and memorable) over the amazing view.