This program displays the live distance of Mars with reasonable (but NOT perfect) accuracy. It uses Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion and the Law of Cosines. It doesn't use cloud variables, just the Days Since 2000 block and some math. -Accuracy- The values are far from perfect. For example, it's a lot less accurate than my Arecibo Message distance project, since unlike radio waves, Mars' speed varies relative to Earth at different points in their orbits. However, it's still fairly accurate. The Earth-Mars distance ranges from about 1-3% off. The distance to the Sun remains quite accurate throughout Mars' orbit since there are fewer variables involved. -Explanation of Each Value- Miles/KM from the Sun: Probably pretty self-explanatory. This counter shows the approximate distance between Mars and the Sun. Miles/KM from the Earth: Also probably self-explanatory. Shows the approximate distance between Mars and the Earth. Apparent Magnitude: Shows how bright Mars currently appears from Earth. Counterintuitively, the lower the number, the brighter an object is. It's known as an inverse scale, which basically means that it's backwards. Mars can be as bright as magnitude -3, and as faint as about +2. That's a difference in brightness of about hundredfold, as the scale is logarithmic. An increase of one magnitude corresponds to a 2.512x increase in brightness. More information can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude Angular Diameter: Indicates how large Mars appears from Earth. When Mars is farther away from Earth, it appears smaller, and when it's closer, it appears larger. The angular diameter of Mars can range from 3 arcseconds to 26 arcseconds. More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter Phase: Much like the Moon, Mars exhibits phases. However, since we are closer to the Sun than Mars is, we can only see Mars from an angle where it appears to be nearly 100% illuminated. The smallest possible phase that we can see from Earth is about 88%. Constellation: As Mars and Earth orbit the Sun, Mars moves across the night sky. I thought it'd be an interesting challenge to calculate the constellation that Mars appears in from Earth. It's not perfectly accurate, but it's reasonably close.
