As we head to the end of the year, Mars takes pride of place in the evening sky

Mars is always fascinating to see in the sky because of the special place it has in both the history of astronomy and pop culture. The first telescopes showed Mars as just a tiny, blurry disc with vague markings on its surface that appeared to come and go, leading to speculation that they were areas of vegetation changing with the seasons. Today we have space telescopes monitoring Mars from Earth orbit, and satellites in orbit around Mars itself have allowed us to map Mars in incredible detail. Landers and rovers send back photos from the surface daily, showing its beautiful rust-hued landscapes and huge open skies.

If you’ve never seen Mars with your own eyes, this is the perfect time to find it. As November begins Mars will be so bright in the sky that it will be impossible to miss, and it will grow a little brighter every day until it becomes one of the brightest objects in the sky at month’s end. While Mars is visible to the naked eye even when it’s at its farthest away from us, every couple of years it reaches the closest point to Earth in its rather eccentric orbit, becoming so bright it outshines every star and every other planet except Venus. This will happen again next month, when Mars will reach opposition, so all through November Mars will grow brighter and brighter in advance of this celestial close encounter of the Martian kind.