Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to be looking forward. In the previous video we looked back to varying degrees and discussed things that were dealt with in the past, specifically figuring out the date of Easter and its relation to calendars. Today, however, we are going to be looking into the future to varying degrees, to try and give a preview of some interesting things that are coming up.

I have briefly mentioned in previous videos that various subscribers, commenters, readers or viewers do occasionally ask to see particular things in the sky. One particular YouTube commenter has given a number of recommendations for interesting things that happen in the future. However, I haven’t looked ahead to them. I was told by a commenter that there are some interesting things coming up in the future, I was told the dates and when to look, but the exact details of what’s coming up weren’t revealed to me. This let the exact nature of the events be a surprise to me as well, so you can see my genuine, first time reaction in the attached video. In a previous piece, quite a while back now, we took a look at the Earth from Mercury on a given date. I didn’t know that that would show us the dark side of the Moon, but it did. This piece is of a similar nature, but we will be looking at a few events.

We’re going to start with this year, although we are still moving into the future, just ahead to August. We’re going to be looking at morning time on the 21st of August. Looking towards sunrise on this date reveals the Crescent Moon sandwiched between Mercury and Venus, with Jupiter just above Venus as well. This is one of the times when Mercury is actually visible from Ireland. As mentioned in many recent pieces, Mercury is tough to spot anywhere, but especially from higher latitudes. In fact, at the moment Mercury and Saturn are up with Venus in the morning, but it’s not quite visible to us here in Ireland. At least, that was the case earlier in April, by now Mercury would be tough to see from anywhere. However, Mercury was more visible in the southern hemisphere and towards the equator. In August we actually have Mercury visible in the morning, quite comfortably at about 5 o’clock. This is based on the view from city, and it still stays visible up there until almost 6 o’clock.

Three planets and the Moon all together and of course that’s just what’s visible to the naked eye. Saturn is also up and visible at that time, but way over towards the opposite horizon. We will have Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, the Moon and Saturn all visible in the sky together, which is pretty great. Neptune is certainly be out there somewhere and Uranus as well, but not visible to the naked eye. With no atmosphere to get in the way we can confirm, Uranus, will still up by the Pleiades, but of course the Pleiades won’t quite be visible with the glow of sunrise. Neptune is also up, almost in conjunction with Saturn, they’re even closer together in August than they seem now. The only thing we’re missing from the morning sky is Mars, and it looks like it will be up in the evening. So that’s the 21st of August this year for a lovely collection of planets visible there in the morning along with the Moon.

That is the soonest thing that we’re going to look at, for the next one we’re already jumping a whole year into the future. We are going to 2026, and ahead to the 19th of May. I knew that I was looking for a conjunction, but not what exactly. Luckily, you don’t need to search the whole sky. Conjunctions, almost by definition, always happen along the ecliptic. That’s where the Moon is going to be to get close to the planets. In this case, just around sunset, we will have a nice conjunction between Venus and the Crescent Moon. However, different things are visible from different locations on Earth. From here in Ireland, they seem close-ish, but if we could follow them under the horizon, we would see them draw closer together. It’s not quite visible for us here in Ireland, but eventually there is a very close conjunction of the Moon and Venus. The Crescent Moon will be right next to Venus, even at our latitude that would look great at sunset if you were slightly further west than we are here in Ireland. Continuing to move forward, the Moon and Venus get further away. They get close together, reach their closest, and then slide past each other. By the time they come back up for us here in Ireland, it’s during the day so we still don’t get to see them. By the time we do get to see them again here in Ireland, the Moon’s after moving a significant distance, ending up almost by Jupiter. It’s a nice indication of how far the Moon can move just overnight as well, with the planets acting almost as landmarks. For us here in Ireland on the 18th, they get very close together, for other locations, they would look closer together on the 19th. All of that is Just next year, in May.

Next, we’re going all the way through to 2079 and looking at the 11th of August. I know that this is an event involving Mars, but at first it was hard to spot. Looking towards sunrise, it seemed likely to be a conjunction of Mars and Mercury, because it looked almost like Mercury was occulting another object. On closer inspection it was a close conjunction between Mercury and Mars, so close it looked like Mercury was on top of something bright in the sky. They are really close together, but this would be a tough one for us to catch here in Ireland, they’re very low to the horizon. Moving ahead, as they get higher in the sky we can see them actually getting further apart and then out of view for us. This is a pretty nice looking conjunction, but if you’re in the right place to see it then it could be better. Getting rid of the atmosphere and the ground lets us follow them for longer, and we can see how close they actually get. When we get a little bit closer to 2079, I may review this and try to figure out exactly where it’s best visible from and exactly the moment that this overlap occurs. However, even from this latitude we can just see about half of Mars over the top of Mercury, so this really does look amazing. I think that probably looks even better than what the hypothetical ideal would be, where Mars is fully occulted by Mercury. With part of Mars visible we get to see the ice cape and one of the big volcanoes on Mars as well.

That is going to be a really, nice conjunction, though a hard one to observe, it will be best seen with a binoculars or telescope. There’s a lot of angles at play to make two planets occult like this. The Moon takes up a huge region of our sky, so for the Moon it’s very easy to block out a planet, the planets are just tiny little dots. Here however, Mercury itself is just a tiny little dot, for Mercury to be able to block out Mars, not entirely from our perspective here in Ireland, they really have to line up perfectly. The margin of error is really slim, so changing location could have a big effect. That is the conjunction of Mercury and Mars there on the 11th of August, 2079. As I said, we may come back to it when we’re a little closer to 2079. I only had time for one more event, due to all of the fiddling around to get the right dates.

For now, we’re going all the way forward here to the year 2518. We’re looking all the way to the end of January, the 25th. For this, I know that I am looking for Venus, and finding it at sunrise I could tell immediately that there is going to be an awesome conjunction along with possibly a lot of planets visible depending on your location on Earth. Just like Mercury and Mars, Venus and Saturn are so close together it’s hard to see Saturn at all at first. Again, they are super close together, but I have an odd feeling that they probably look even better from a different part of the world. These planetary conjunctions or occultations, where two planets actually overlap in the sky, are rare. As I was saying, for Mercury and Mars, it’s just so hard to get the exact right location and the exact right angles for something like this to happen. With the ground out of the way, we can follow the two plants back in time and back under the horizon, to see them overlap. This happens at about 10:30 at night here in Ireland, while they are both under the horizon. We’d need to be possibly further west and a maybe little further south. From Ireland’s latitude Venus appears to be down in front of Saturn’s rings. If they lined up just perfectly, then Venus would almost look like it had Saturn’s rings. This would require Venus being a little bit higher, which I think would mean putting the observer lower on the Earth, further south. I’m going to leave figuring out exactly where for another time, but with a slight alteration, this could look even better.

Again, that is way ahead in the year 2518, so we’ll likely review it when we get a little bit closer to it. There are other very cool features coming up even further in the future that I was informed of by a commenter that I didn’t get to this time. As such, there will be another video like this in the future, as there are potentially more really cool conjunctions, but who knows. These were pointed out to me by a very thoughtful commenter, which I appreciate as I’m sure everyone else reading this does. The 2518 morning sky may have every planet from the right location, so as well as going over the other cool conjunctions in the future and I might fiddle around with that one. Of course, I may not still be making these videos in the year 2518, we’ll have to wait and see.

I hope that you enjoyed this piece, hope you liked looking ahead to these future things. I’m glad that they were a surprise for me as well, and there will be more in the future, so make sure to like this piece if you enjoyed it and subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel if you’d like to see more more like this. Most importantly, thank you for watching and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.