At midnight tonight [June 13], the silly season officially begins.
Mars begins its rush toward earth - about 10km a second - and the UFO sightings will start to mount. Luckily it only lasts about a week.
The reality of the cosmic event, which begins this week, is that Mars comes the closest to Earth it has been in more than 12 years - about 67.6 million km to be precise.
The result is that the planet will appear as a bright red disc just above the horizon in the eastern sky after 7pm.
But the only side effect of such an encounter is the growing number of UFO sightings - which, according to the experts, have already begun.
Cathy Clarke from UFO Research NSW claimed that the calls had been steadily growing in the past couple of months.
"It has been very active over the past three months ... more than normal," said Ms Clarke, who takes calls from distressed people who claim to have either seen UFOs or had alien abduction experiences.
"I am sure that events like this do have an impact. People are not well versed about what goes on cosmologically."
Stargazers would have already noticed our closest planetary neighbour growing in size for the past few weeks.
Tonight is when Mars will be exactly opposite the sun with the Earth in between.
On June 22, Mars' elliptic orbit will reach its closest point to earth since 1988, when it came to 57.5 million km.
An even more spectacular view of Mars will occur in August 2003. Then, the planet will be closer to the Earth than it has been for about 6000 years - a distance of just 56 million km.
Then, according to US researchers, "they will really begin to come out of the woodwork".
Previous close approaches by Mars have been marked by a big increase in UFO sightings.
Robin Scagell, vice-president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "If you're driving in a car and see Mars above the tree tops, it can appear to be following you. People wonder what on earth it is and think they've seen a UFO."
Nick Lomb from Sydney Observatory said the best time to see Mars would be in the early evening looking toward the east.
With the naked eye, it would appear as a big red star.
But a telescope with a magnification of 40 or 50 is enough to reveal the planet's major features, including polar ice caps and possibly even clouds.
The planet appears red because of its rusty dust, caused by large amounts of iron in its soil.
"The next few months will be a great time to look at Mars," said NASA astronomy professor George Lebo.
"You won't need a telescope to see it.
"By early June Mars will outshine everything except Venus, the Moon, and the sun itself."
The European Mars Express mission is due to be launched in 2003.
It will carry the mainly British Beagle II probe, which will land on the planet to search for signs of life.
