Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to be looking into the future. Of course, on this website we almost always look into the future, it is a pretty rare event that I will look into the past. I almost always look ahead to the future because I want to prepare people for events that are coming up. Usually, we only look a few days to a month into the future, but I have in the past looked much further ahead. If you go back through my previous articles, I believe it was last year, looked much further into the future than normal, all the way up to 2061 for the return of Halley’s Comet. If you would like to prepare yourself for 2061 and the return of Halley’s Comet, that is something you can do by looking back through my articles. Of course there is no rush to do that now given that we’re going to be waiting until 2061, but it doesn’t hurt me if you go back and review my previous pieces, I’d certainly be thankful.

We’re going to look even further ahead a little bit later in this video, but to begin with, we’re going to take a look at Mars. We’re going to be looking at the opposition of Mars, though this year’s opposition of Mars was actually a little bit in the past. At the moment we’re only seeing Mars at 94.3% full, and at just 9 o’clock Mars is directly above the south. These are all signs, the fact it’s not 100% full, or at least very close to 100% full, the fact that we’re not seeing it directly above the south at midnight, all of these are signs that Mars isn’t that opposition. If we begin pushing back to earlier in the year, into January, we’ll see it at just 99.9% full. We will also see it due south at roughly midnight. For Ireland, it still seems to be little bit late coming up to the middle of the sky. We would see Mars at its highest at close to 1 o’clock, certainly a bit after 12. This is because we have to adjust for Greenwich Mean Time and the size of the time zones when we’re at the edge. We’re not quite at the edge, but we’re definitely off the center towards one edge. The exact relative distances is something that I haven’t worked out, not that it matters. All the matters is that we’re seeing Mars here, nice and bright, because it’s at its brightest, because it’s at opposition. We’re seeing Mars at a magnitude of -1.47, reduced to -1.27 by the atmosphere. We’re looking for bigger negative numbers which of course means lower on the number scale, higher on the number scale into positive numbers brings you to a fainter object. For example, we can compare with Jupiter, which we’re seeing at -2.6 reduced to -2.44 a the moment. This lets us conclude that Mars at opposition for this year, is still less bright than Jupiter and Jupiter is not even an opposition. To be fair Jupiter’s not super far off opposition, but it is not at opposition none the less. Even though -2.6 to -2.44 is almost double -1.47 to -1.27, the brightness isn’t exactly doubled due to the logarithmic nature of the magnitude scale.

If we were to go through time here, the Moon would get in the way and the ground would get in the way. I don’t want any of those things to get in the way, and thanks to software like Stellarium, we can simulate our view without those limitations. That lets us see Mars at -1.43 without the extinction, because I’ve gotten rid of the atmosphere. We’re going to move through time staying focused on Mars, we can see it doing its little weird loop of apparent retrograde motion as we move back through opposition. As it moves away from us it grows fainter, with its magnitude moving into positive numbers, we’re seeing it getting down there to about magnitude 1.3/1.4. That is definitely on par with a lot of stars, for example with Mars almost on the far side of the Sun at 1.6, it is fainter than Arcturus, at magnitude 0.15, even fainter than Spica at magnitude 0.95. Even Mercury is just at magnitude 0.4. With the view I’m using to simulate all this, Venus is at magnitude -4, the Moon at -7, all much brighter than Mars there at positive 1.6. This is of course is fainter, when we’re in those positive numbers, the bigger they get the fainter the object. It is so faint mostly because it’s very far from us. Most of Mars’s surface is still illuminated, we’re still seeing the side of Mars that’s facing the Sun, we always see the side of Mars that’s facing the Sun, but it’s further from us on the far side of the Sun. Coming around here to opposition last year, we see Mars at -1.97, practically -2. This is brighter, Mars’s opposition was brighter back in 2022. We’ve gone back a couple of years here of course, the exact time it takes for Mars to come back to the same position in the sky isn’t the exact same as simply travelling forward a year like it is for the stars. Mars has its own orbit around the Sun, but back inn 2022 it was -1.97, not the -1.6-ish, we got before the atmosphere, that we were seeing, or -1.43 with the atmosphere. Of course, the -1.97 we had would have been reduced to about -1.8/-1.7 with the atmosphere.

These things vary, exactly how bright Mars is varies depending on exactly how close it is to us during opposition, thanks to the fact that their are two elliptical orbits going on here. When we are at our closest to Mars for a given year, when Mars is at opposition, it could happen while we are at perihelion or aphelion. Mars can also vary from perihelion to aphelion, so its opposition can happen while we’re both at aphelion or both be at perihelion. One planet could be at aphelion while the other is at perihelion wen opposition happens. What we should want is the Earth at aphelion and Mars at perihelion. We want the Earth to be the furthest away from the Sun that it’s going to get and Mars to be the closest to the Sun. With us in between it will be at it’s closest possible to us, that’s really what we want for the brightest possible view of Mars.

As such, we’re going to go through some time here with Mars roughly in the right position in the sky. It doesn’t have to be exact, we just have to make sure that we stay locked on to Mars here as we jump through the years. We’re not going to see it exactly at opposition every single time, because of the way it’s time of opposition varies. Mars’s moment of opposition is a product of our year and the Martian year. I do have it on a some authority, and that is to say someone in the comment section of a previous video told me, that 2033’s opposition is particularly bright. If we hop forward to that year, we may still be looking at the wrong time of year, so we’re going to go through time day by day to try and get Mars up to opposition. We want to see its brightness coming down, because the lower the magnitude the brighter the object. We’re getting up into the 90’s in terms of how full mars is. We will get up to 99.9% full, we’re still not seeing it at 100% full but that’s probably down to the inclination relative to the ecliptic. We’re seeing Mars then at -2.57, significantly brighter. It isn’t just almost as bright as Jupiter, with Jupiter at -2.56 and Mars at -2.57, it looks like Mars is going to be brighter than Jupiter during its opposition in 2033.

However, that is not the brightest brightness that has been reported to me. I am going off something that I have been told by a commenter so of course I had to double-check. It’s always good to fact-check things, never just believe anything blindly if you can avoid it. Looking all the way ahead to the year 2097, we will move up to the opposition of Mars. It looks like we’re only getting to 99.8% full, again this could be down to the tilts involved, but that gets us Mars directly above the south at 1 o’clock in the morning. Again, we do need to adjust for things like the shape of the time zones, but we are seeing Mars at -2.80. That’s just incredible, incredibly bright. That will be Mars at it’s brightest, in 2097.

I hope some of you can look forward to that. I am generally a rather hopeful and optimistic person but, by 2097, I would be over 100 years old. Who I knows, maybe I will make it over 100 years old but, statistically it is unlikely and it is important to acknowledge those kinds of realisms. I may realistically make it to 2061 to see the return of a Halley’s Comet, however 2097, that may be a year too far. I’m healthy but I don’t think I’m that healthy. We’re going to come all the way back now, it seems like very far back, all the way back 2025. There were a couple of other things that I wanted to discus, but I couldn’t get to them all in the time span of the attached video. Instead what we’re going to do is we’re going to bring back the atmosphere and the ground, we’re going to head out to the countryside and we are going to move forward to just one more thing. We’re looking for planets, coming all the way back now to late February because of course it is in late February when we get all of the planets in the sky this year.

I don’t think that the 28th, the very last day of the month, I don’t believe that will give us the best view possible. We’re do need to be in a pretty pristine dark sky location to see all of the planets this year. Mercury is a little bit lower there than Saturn on the 23rd, less so on the 24th, that’s when we see them about as close together as we’re going to see them from here in Ireland. I think we’ll see Mercury a little bit closer to Saturn on the 24th than we will on the 25th. Mercury will be just a little bit higher than Saturn on the 25th. Even though the actual distance between them is similar, they look more level with each other on the 24th, which makes them seem a little bit closer together. Taking in these planets for a second, we’ve got Saturn and Mercury next to each other. Just above them we’ve got Neptune, invisible to the naked eye. Then we’ve got Venus a little higher again. We’ve got Uranus, also likely invisible to the naked eye, then Jupiter and finally Mars. They’re all visible there, as long as you have a telescope, and they’re not even too spread out across the sky. They stretch form Mars high in the south east down to the sunset in the west. It’s almost like we’re looking at a section of the ecliptic curve here, only about quarter of the whole circle, give or take, probably a little bit more than a quarter.

Yet again we are going to travel forwards in time. We’re going to travel forwards to 2040, and we’re going to go forward to September. We should have a lot of planets close together in the sky here, but I’m not seeing them. Going through a couple of days, and we’re not seeing all the planets in the morning, nor are we seeing all the planets in the evening. This implies to me that the planets are all going to be up during the day. To see them, we will get rid of that atmosphere, and there they are. Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, Venus and Mars, all super super close together. It looks like from here in Ireland they’re too close together and too close to the Sun. We’re seeing the Sun barely dipping under the horizon before being followed by the planets. They’re all there, or at least all the naked eye planets. Neptune, shouldn’t be too far away, we’re only a decade and a half into the future. However, all of the planets that are visible to the naked eye are clustered way way closer together in 2040 than they are for the current parade of planets. If you’re a little bit closer to the equator you might actually be able to see it.

We will revisit that at least in 2040, possibly before. If you want to catch that then make sure to subscribe to this website and YouTube channel. If you enjoyed this piece then please do like it and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.