Every two years or so, Mars lines up nicely with the Earth. It only takes two minutes to communicate with rovers, you can see the polar ice caps in a small telescope, and it’s the best time to send spacecraft to the red planet.
![Ep. 577: Mars in Opposition](https://www.astronomycast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/7834_hubble-mars-opposition-2016-full2.jpg)
Fraser Cain
Universe Today
Dr. Pamela Gay
CosmoQuest
Every two years or so, Mars lines up nicely with the Earth. It only takes two minutes to communicate with rovers, you can see the polar ice caps in a small telescope, and it’s the best time to send spacecraft to the red planet.
It’s time, once again, for Astronomy Cast to go on hiatus. You’ve got a couple of months on your own to explore the night sky. Before we say goodbye, though, we’d like to make a few suggestions.
As amateur astronomers, we curse the Moon every month. Seriously, why doesn’t someone get rid of that thing? This week, something occurred to us. What if we actually pointed our telescopes at the Moon? What would we see?
We imagine the asteroid belt as the place where all the rocks hang out in the Solar System, but there are two huge bands of asteroids that orbit the Sun with Jupiter called the Trojans. And soon, we might actually get a chance to see them up close.
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