{"id":2150,"date":"2016-05-31T19:40:09","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T23:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=2150"},"modified":"2016-06-10T19:14:19","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T23:14:19","slug":"martian-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=2150","title":{"rendered":"Martian Opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mars glowered brilliantly red in opposition in the Eastern sky.\u00a0And on\u00a0a tropically warm\u00a0summer night,\u00a0 we floated in space, on the still glassy water of Lake Winnipesaukee. The stars glittered magnificently\u00a0 and their reflection\u00a0on black, shining waters made it seem like we were floating in the very middle of the Milky Way.\u00a0\u00a0It was 2003, and <a href=\"http:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/allaboutmars\/nightsky\/opposition\/\">Mars was\u00a0in opposition<\/a>, the closet it had come to Earth in 60,000 years.\u00a0 We were out in the middle of the lake on a pontoon boat on a family vacation.\u00a0We appreciated the stillness and the beauty of it all, like we were suspended in time.<\/p>\n<p>But time was moving of course. Mars and Earth kept spinning\u00a0around the sun for another thirteen revolutions, passing\u00a0each other until Mars was again in <a href=\"http:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/allaboutmars\/nightsky\/opposition\/\">opposition<\/a>. Life and the world had changed: Loved ones passed away,\u00a0the world was different.<\/p>\n<p>It was now. Memorial Day 2016. I was in Vermont, and Mars loomed big and impressive over the silhouette of the Green Mountains.\u00a0 I was grateful to survive long enough to witness another <a href=\"http:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/allaboutmars\/nightsky\/opposition\/\">Martian Opposition<\/a>. Maybe I&#8217;ll see a few more.<\/p>\n<p>Time keeps on moving and I strongly suspect we are living inside a magnificent celestial time machine.<\/p>\n<p><em>Copyright 2016 Magnus Incognito<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mars glowered brilliantly red in opposition in the Eastern sky.\u00a0And on\u00a0a tropically warm\u00a0summer night,\u00a0 we floated in space, on the still glassy water of Lake Winnipesaukee. The stars glittered magnificently\u00a0 and their reflection\u00a0on black, shining waters made it seem like &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/?p=2150\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[84,86,79,87,88,81,85,80,82,83],"class_list":["post-2150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-clinton","tag-mara","tag-mars","tag-martian","tag-opposition","tag-racisim","tag-sanders","tag-sex","tag-social-justice","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2150"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions\/2194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christopherdonahue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}