Mars and audiobooks

A friend of mine from SFC texted me several weeks ago with this message:

"Planet Mars will be brightest in the night sky starting August. It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will culminate on August 27 when Mars comes to within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch the sky on August 27, 12:30 AM. It will look like the earth has two moons. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Share this with your loved ones and friends as no one alive today will ever see it again..."



I checked the net if this is true and I found these articles in this website:

Will Mars be close in August 2006?

Can Mars appear as large as the moon?

Apparently, it's a hoax, spread through email since 2003, when Mars was close to the Earth, but not as close as to appear the size of the moon. It only looked like a star.

On average, Mars is approximately 139.5 million miles away from Earth.

In contrast, the moon is a scant 238,700 miles away, on average.

For Mars to appear as close as the moon is to Earth it would have to at least be about 500,000 miles (since the diameter of Mars is about twice that of the moon's) close...

So much for my initial excitement...

Anyway, incidentally, I'm listening (yes, listening) to this novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs called A Princess of Mars. This after having "discovered" this awesome website that offers audiobooks of novels, shortstories and poems for free! -- Librivox -- much to my excitement and delight.

So now, I'm in love with the spoken word. It has renewed my interest and perhaps passion in literature and reading. It has sort of opened for me a vast, new, and exciting world... the world of audiobooks... Following through the links from the site I was led to other public domain sites offering a wealth of other works in audio for free. For example, I found this great blog in which the author on a regular basis does a reading (podcast) on various Catholic literature, plus more! --

Maria Lectrix: Six days a week of public domain audiobooks — mystery, history, adventure, devotion — for people with Catholic tastes.

These sites are truly Heaven sent!