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Mars comes closer to Earth more than any other planet save Venus at its nearest—56 million km is the closest distance between Mars and Earth, whereas the closest Venus comes to Earth is 40 million km. Mars comes closest to Earth every other year, around the time of its opposition, when Earth is sweeping between the Sun and Mars. Extra-close ...
Moving far backwards in time, more than 200,000 years ago Venus sometimes passed by at a distance from Earth of barely less than 38 million km, and will next do that after more than 400,000 years. Venus and Earth come the closest, but they come less often closer than Venus and Mercury . [ 10 ]
With a few exceptions, the farther a planet or belt is from the Sun, the larger the distance between its orbit and the orbit of the next nearest object to the Sun. For example, Venus is approximately 0.33 AU farther out from the Sun than Mercury, whereas Saturn is 4.3 AU out from Jupiter, and Neptune lies 10.5 AU out from Uranus.
When Venus lies between Earth and the Sun in inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of 41 million km (25 million mi). [ 4 ] [ note 3 ] [ 172 ] Because of the decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit , the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years.
Mars Global Surveyor imaged the Earth and Moon on May 8, 2003, 13:00 UTC, very close to maximum angular elongation from the Sun and at a distance of 0.930 AU from Mars. The apparent magnitudes were given as −2.5 and +0.9. [8] At different times the actual magnitudes will vary considerably depending on distance and the phases of the Earth and ...
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Mars is usually close enough for particularly good viewing once or twice at 15-year or 17-year intervals. [196] Optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about 300 kilometres (190 mi) across when Earth and Mars are closest because of Earth's atmosphere. [197]
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