Caoimhín's Content

Although this Irish language video takes a look ahead into March, there are still a few interesting things yet to happen in February. To start on a low note, Saturn will be gone from the sky at night, by now as the Sun is setting, Saturn will be out of view. Jupiter is still there, Jupiter will still be there early in the night for a few weeks yet, but only early in the night. We can see even early in the evening that Jupiter is not directly in South, If Jupiter is further West than due South when the Sun goes down, then it will be up for lees than half the night. Even looking at the 22nd of this month, it looks like Jupiter will only be up for about the first quarter of the night. Pushing a little further ahead to the 24th for the Full Moon, as I’m sure many of you already know we will have a Micromoon. The Moon will be a little over 400,000km, making the Moon a little fainter and a tiny bit smaller in the sky. I’ve dedicated a whole video to the concepts of Supermoons and Micromoons already if you want to take a look back for them. I will of course deal with them again when we come around to the Supermoon later this year.

Pushing right ahead to morning time while still in February, Venus is still clearly visible at sunrise. However, it is joined now by the Red Planet, Mars! In fact, the brightest planet in the sky will be right next to one of the most famous as the Sun rises around the end of February. Starting, as my videos often do, with a view of the sky both from Ireland and from a city like Cork, this lovely conjunction is almost impossible to see. For once, it’s not just a matter of light pollution, our latitude also has something to do with it. Unless we zoom in quite a bit, and of course using a telescope during sunrise can be unsafe, this is only a simulation, we can’t see Mars at all. Even if we remove any trace of light pollution, the light of the Sun will block out Mars as soon as it is high in the sky, you can only catch it very low to the horizon. It will technically be visible above the horizon, but a tree or small building can easily block it out that low, it will be almost impossible if you are in a valley.

As the two planets rise higher into the sky Venus will stay visible. Venus is so bright that we will be able to see Venus even when the Sun is almost up, especially in the countryside, as late as 7:30 in good conditions. To make Mars visible, reasonably visible rather than the challenge we would have here, we need to move somewhere else. To catch some lunar conjunctions in a recent video, we changed our longitude, but for this planetary conjunction, we need to change our latitude instead. We’re going to travel all the way down to the equator, in this case to the center of Africa. I mention in the video that if you are looking at a map like this, one that resembles to a satellite view showing vegetation and ground cover, that the equator is on the green areas close to the middle. The places that are a verdant green, those are the places that are on the equator. Deserts, especially the Sahara and Sahel region, can be incredibly hot, and many people intuit that the equator must be there. However, those deserts are on either side of the equator, the equator is usually more humid.

As the Sun rises on the equator, we can see the planets stretching ahead of it, but they rise almost directly into the sky. This looks very different to our view of the, lying close to the ground and rising at an angle. If you are far from the equator, like us in Ireland, we’ll see the planets low to the north, just like the Sun. On the other hand, if you are down in parts of Brazil or Central Africa, or in parts of Indonesia, any where along the equator, you’ll see the morning and evening planets much higher above the horizon, thanks to the different angle from which you are viewing the ecliptic. In this particular case, the close conjunction of Venus and Mars in the morning will be much easier to see and for people in the right locations, those two planets will be very close together in the sky. The initial view of the video assumes low light pollution, and in many equatorial areas, where the rainforests are still thick, this would be true. However, there are cities, some very big cities, on the equator, and there’s a good chance that that is where you are if you are reading this from an equatorial location. Certainly from a city the size of Cork, Mars and Venus are so far ahead of the glow of sunrise that they are clearly visible, even with a bit of light pollution. Some equatorial cities are much bigger, with much more light pollution than Cork. Singapore is the one that first came to mind, but Quito in Ecuador is even closer to being right on the equator and is home to about 2 million people, about ten times the population of Cork. Presumably, this would allow for more light pollution as well. I’ve never visited Singapore, or Quito, but I have seen pictures of the bright lights and skyscrapers in Singapore, so I’m certainly confident that it has more light pollution than Cork. Even with the light pollution set much higher than what I’m used to, Venus and Mars are still there early enough before sunrise, right next to each other in the sky. that is coming up,

As we finally push into march itself, by around the middle of the month we will have Mercury coming out in the evening, just a the Sun is setting. It is very difficult to see it here in Ireland, and this is an other case where it will be easier closer to the equator. It should be there just above the sunset, far under the Moon and Jupiter. As it is so low in the sky, it will suffer from similar issues to viewing Mars, but it won’t be quite as difficult, Mercury will be visible higher in the evening sky as we approach the middle of March. Pushing a little past the mid point of the month, the 20th of March is is the equinox.

The equinox is the day, one of two a year, on which the day and the night are the equal lengths. We have looked at the solstice before in videos and in articles like this one, particularly the winter solstice. On the solstices, day and night are as uneven as they can get, with the night as long as possible and the day as short as possible for the winter solstice, the reverse for the summer solstice. On the equinoxes, the Vernal Equinox in Spring and the Autumnal Equinox in Autumn, the day and night are the same length. They are right in between the two solstices and right in between their two extremes. At noon the Sun reaches its most middling height in the sky, the Sun won’t be at its lowest midday point nor its highest, and the Sun will rise exactly in the East and set exactly in the West. There is variation across the year, with the Sun rising and setting more to the north in summer, more to the south in winter. Of course, the equinox seems like a pretty normal day unless you take special notice, and now you can.

In the video, I compare the name of the equinox in Irish, “cónocht” with the Irish word for tonight, “anocht”, different from the Irish word for nighttime in general, “oíche”. “Nocht” is a word in Irish, it pops up in phrases like “súl nocht”, meaning naked eye. Words begining with “có” and often “comh” are usually related to things being equal. My clumsy translation was to compare equinox with the “nox” in “nocturnal”, which doesn’t quite work but is similar, being equal length to the day, equi-nox. It certainly feels more fluid in Irish.

Pushing further forward again towards the end of the month, we come to the Full Moon, on the 24th for us here in Ireland. The Moon will be about 99.8% full when it rises, reaching 100% as it begins to set. AS it begins to disappear from us here in Ireland, you may start to see one side of the Moon darken. This will happen as the Sun rises, so of course it’s tough for us to see, but this is the begining of a lunar eclipse. It is only a partial lunar eclipse, a penumbral one in particular, so only the edge of the Earth’s shadow will catch the Moon, but that will be much easier to see in other parts of the world. In particular, the Americas, most of North and South America and out into the Pacific, will be some of the best places to see it. For this, we don’t really need to change latitude, just longitude, but having the Moon almost directly over head certainly looks interesting, so we travel all the way to roughly the Galapagos Islands. As it is only a penumbral lunar eclipse, the moon won’t turn red, more of a slight greying of the other wise white Moon, but the progress of the eclipse will be visible almost from start to finish from this location, reaching its peak, with most of the Moon in partial shadow, by midnight, with the Moon directly overhead.

There will be plenty more to talk about in March, I don’t want to use up all the good material too early, but that brings us to the end of what was covered in the video. An English language video will be up next, on Thursday, and it will cover many of the same things, but not the ideal view of the partial eclipse, that is just for the people who watch all of the videos, even if you need to read the subtitles. Or if you prefer to read the content in these articles, of course. If that’s you, then thank you, and I hope to see you again next time.