At around 1am on Sunday morning, I found myself in the middle of a large field, trying and failing to make crop circles with a group of friends [we were at a party and had decided to go for a moonlit stroll]. Without the right tools, circle-making is very difficult indeed, which was a shame because we all had visions of the opening the local newspaper to see a headline like: “They’re here…mysterious circle appears in Chopwell field”. Even though our attempt was completely rubbish, it was still quite exciting to think that someone might discover it and believe that aliens have landed. Alas…it wasn’t to be, and we soon gave up after admitting to ourselves that we were creating not so much a circle, but more of a kind of splodge of flattened grass. Anyway, after this episode, our attention was drawn to the clear skies above us and the bright reddish pin-prick that was Mars hanging low in the sky. We talked about humans travelling there, and what the psychological impact would be on the brave astronauts touching down and seeing Earth as a bright bluish/green pin-prick in the martian sky. This would be the first time a human being would lose sight of Earth [apart from flying around the dark side of the moon, which was only a few minutes of terra firma blackout], and no-one really knows how this would effect the minds of the people staying there. So, tonight, if the sky is clear, find Mars [the brightest, reddest object you can see] and think to yourself what it would be like to stand on its surface and see Earth as nothing but a bright star… a daunting thought, no?