It all depends on what time you saw it. It rises in the Southeast around 7:00 or 8:00 pm your time, and sets in the Southwest sometime in the morning. Terry and I saw it two weeks ago when we went camping. It does shine like a star, but the way you can tell it's Mars and not just a star is because it's bright, and it flickers red, orangey in color where a star is just white. It was really cool. All we had were binoculars so we really didn't get a good look at it, but it was still cool.

Right now, when it's at it's closest it would still take a human 7 - 8 months to get there. The last time it was this close was in 57,000 something BC!!!! They said it would be just a little closer than this in 2200 something, just a mere 200 years from now rather than another 60,000 - I found that interesting.

Seeing mars like this was cool, but my favorite was last year when there were 7 planets lined up in a row at one point - and you could see them all. Now that was cool!