I took this photo of the Moon and Mars last night with my phone. It might not be the best photo but believe me when I say they were both GORGEOUS. Or better yet: don’t believe me — go out tonight and see for yourself! 
Now is a great time to look at Mars. It’s unusually close to Earth in its orbit and (for the same reason) pretty much directly opposite the Sun. It’s as though it’s doing its best to be a mirror for the Sun shining back at us, so it’s very very bright. This is called #opposition.
Here’s a diagram of the positions of the planets right now from theplanetstoday.com. You can see that both the Moon and Mars are in the opposite direction as the Sun, so the Moon is close to full & Mars is bright and close. #MarsOpposition
Incidentally, this convenient closeness of Earth and Mars in their orbits is why so many spacecraft were launched toward Mars a couple months ago! #MarsOpposition cnn.com/2020/07/27/wor…
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