So Mars is in opposition today / tomorrow. See an animation of how close we get. We went and saw this on Friday. *

But I wonder if there are Martians doing the same thing, rushing around to their space observatories to see the Earth!

"Okay, class, everyone line up nicely. The last time Earth was so close to us was 31,900 Martian years ago! Notice that Earth has two polar caps that never melt like ours is. They also are 75% covered with water, making most of their land useless because it's underwater. There's considerable alien activity over a lot of the inhabited land, but so far, only a few of their ships have even bothered to come out to greet us. You all remember, of course, the little remote control toy car they sent to us as a gift? That's right, the one that Tommy broke."

---
* Already on Friday, the lineup at Chabot was three hours long at midnight to see the red planet. People were clamouring for a view of this once-in-a-lifetime event! We wussed out and did a 20-minute wait to peer through an amateur telescope instead, opting to come back another day.