Look up. Actually, wait until dark, wait a few more hours, then look up. It's huge, it's red, it's like nothing you've ever seen in the sky before. Actually, no one has ever seen this in human history, and they won't again for 60 thousand years.

Have you seen Mars? I enjoy the occasional astronomical event, but I don't usually get too worked up over them, but this is just amazing me. (I told you about it a week ago, did you look for it?) I finally tracked down the specific info. There's a very detailed story about it in Space.com (though spare yourself the nerdball intro and start after the first subhead "Start Tonight").

Both it and Jack Horkhemier, the big queen astronomer on PBS, offer explicit directions to find it, which is normally incredibly helpful, since I have trouble finding anything in the sky. For once, the idea of directions is kind of absurd. Just crane your head around between 10 p.m. and around dawn, and look for the huge burning object that has no business being up in the sky. A fraction the size of the moon, but many times bigger than any star. About half the width of a pencil eraser, and glowing the color of sunset. I have never seen anything like it. And it's just getting started.

The peak comes at the end of the month. A bit more on that from the Space.com piece:

On Aug. 28, Mars will reach "opposition," the moment when the Sun, Earth, and Mars form a straight line in space, with Earth and Mars on the same side of the all-important star.

When a planet reaches opposition, it lies exactly opposite the Sun in our sky: It rises at sunset, reaches its highest point in the sky at midnight, and sets at sunrise.