See Something Amazing - Planetary Alignment from now until the end of Feb 2025!

[Gwolf]

From now until the end of February there will be a planetary alignment.

This is when all or most of the planets will be lined up in a row. I saw the beginning of it last night. Just after dark 30 go outside and look about 20 degrees to the South of due West. The alignment will be the brightest thing in the night sky. It it is visible just above the Western horizon from where I am located. It might be higher up or lower in the sky, depending on what latitude you are looking at it from. Also, if you live in a city, the light pollution there will make it much more difficult to see. There is almost no light pollution where I live,o and the beginning of the alignment was shining very bright.



If you are familiar with the night sky, then you will know that you can't see all the planets that are aligned, because you are looking from the Earth (3rd planet from the Sun!) So Mercury and Venus will be on the side facing toward the Sun, and the other planets will be on the side looking away from the Sun. There will not be another major alignment until the year 2040, so don't miss this one if the sky is clear enough to see it. Weather, clouds, and fog can block the view, but the planets are much closer than the stars, and the light of the Sun reflecting from them will be almost as bright as the Moon, but they are farther away, so the bright spots of light are smaller than the Moon.

Here is a website with most of the information you will need to locate the planets in the night sky, and the best times to see them.

https://starwalk.space/en/news/what-is-planet-parade

 

[Gwolf]

Here is approximately what will be visible tonight (Feb 21 just after twilight) looking west. The base location used to set this up is Tallahassee, Florida, since that is the nearest base location to where I live. The same general locations for the stars and planets will be visible in most of the North American - Northern Hemisphere. This map is based on Eastern Standard Time and adjustments need to be made for the other time zones. About the center of this map are three of the planets in the alignment that could be visble to the naked eye tonight.
Click Star Map to enlarge...........


Map produced by KStars Astronomy Program running on Ubuntu Linux laptop computer.
https://kstars.kde.org/features/

 

[AstroTom]

Thanks for sharing this event. I'll add some info.

For the vast majority of people, only three of the brightest planets are visible now, so it'll be less spectacular visually, than the description suggests. I like to call these kinds of events a "technical event" because visually, there's less to see, especially for the majority of people in suburban and urban skies. A perfect example is the much over hyped technical event - a Supermoon, which is technically the brightest and biggest full moon(s) of the year, but visually, it doesn't look any different than any other full moon, despite what internet stories claim. Even if technical events are less dramatic to a casual observer, it can still be fun to spend a few minutes outside to look up at the night sky. I like to describe astronomy as a journey of the mind, more than the eye, because the universe likes to hide her secrets in the dark. While there are some WOW! objects, most are more about knowing what you are seeing than being visually stunning. Like looking at the very tiny disk of Uranus, Neptune, and star-like Pluto, knowing you are looking at planets billions of miles away. Even through a telescope, a galaxy of 100+ billion stars appears as a hazy smudge in the eyepiece, but you are looking at light that left their stars millions of years ago. Here's an astrophysics fun fact: To us, the light has traveled immense distances over a long time, in the case of the farthest thing you can see with your eye - the Andromeda Galaxy, the light has traveled over 2,000,000 years to get to us, but as Einstein's Special Relativity explains, to the photon of light, it leaves the galaxy and arrives at our eye at the same instant. This is a great example where physics don't always agree with common sense.

FYI: Both Mercury and Saturn will be in the bright twilight of sunset, and will set before the sky becomes dark. Uranus and Neptune cannot be seen without visual aid. Technically, Uranus is visible to the unaided sky in very dark skies IF, you know exactly where to look, otherwise, it's a binocular object. Neptune requires a telescope or large binoculars and dark skies to spot.

Still, the three bright planets, Venus in the West, Jupiter and Mars high overhead, are a pretty sight.
If it'll help you imagine what you are looking at. Mercury has come around the far side of the sun and is catching up with Earth. Venus is now dropping a little lower in the sky each night as it will soon to pass between the Earth and the sun. Both Venus and Mercury have phases like the Moon. Right now Venus is a thinning crescent through a telescope. As for the outer planets, the Earth is outrunning them in their orbits which causes them to move west toward the sun as our distance increases. One thing to note is the difference in color between the three bright planets. Venus is brilliant white, Jupiter a softer off-white, and Mars a pale orange.

Enjoy this event. There's a lot going on out there that we rarely notice in our everyday lives. The universe is an amazing place.

 

[2dogs]

Could this planetary alignment be responsible for some of the recent clusters of earthquakes?

 

[Gwolf]

True, the only one that has been really spectacular is Venus. It has been extremely clear here for 2 days and there is very little light pollution. Venus was the brightest thing in the sky long before sundown. The other two are difficult to see with the naked eye. Watching as it grows darker, you will see them before any of the stars in the constellations near them become visible at all.
Gonna have put it on hold tonight. Got some heavy overcast here and no clear windows thru it anywhere.

 

[Gwolf]

Could this planetary alignment be responsible for some of the recent clusters of earthquakes?

Not likely, but it will probably be blamed for global warming, even though it was about 35 degrees when I was out there last night.
The last video I posted in the first post explains, in the very early part of the video, that any gravitational pull from any or all of the nearby planets is so minute it is almost unmeasurable in relation to the gravitational pull exerted by the moon, which causes the change of the tides even when no other planets are nearby. About the only thing that will be noticed is the very bright light of Venus on a clear evening.

There is a good chance that whatever events occur during the end of February will be blamed on the alignment by ignorant people or sensation seeking news reporters. Maybe the measles outbreak in Texas or an Internet outage... Not much has changed in the last 400 years except that bad news travels far faster than it did just 50 or 60 years ago.

 

[AstroTom]

Could this planetary alignment be responsible for some of the recent clusters of earthquakes?

Nope, not at all. The grand alignment of 1982 had all the planets within a 90 degree arc of the sky. I clearly remember some making predictions of huge earthquakes and the possibility of western states breaking loose and slipping into the ocean. Of course, nothing happened.

While these planets have mass and hance gravity, especially Jupiter, their distances mean their gravitational influence is astronomically small. All the planets settled into stable orbits long ago and these alignments have been happening for a very, very, long time. The gravitational forces caused by the moon and sun are many orders of magnitude greater than of all the other planets combined. Think of it like the difference in stress on a road between a cement truck and a quarter.

Don't worry if you missed the specific date because this alignment has been going on since January. Only new event is Mercury has now joined the parade and the gap between the planets in the sky has closed up some. As time goes on, Mercury will climb a little higher in the evening twilight, while Saturn drops lower, toward the horizon followed by Neptune and Venus.