Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to be looking into the future. Just last month, so at least a handful of articles ago, we took a look at various distances into the future to see some interesting events that were coming up, suggested to me by a commenter on YouTube. The big difference about these events is that I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for in advance. I was told that there would be interesting things on certain future dates and then went to look for them, so I see them for the first time when making the attached video.

We are going to do the same thing today and we’re going to start by not going too far into the future at all. We’re only going forward to 2028. We’re going forward to the 18th of March in 2028 and we’re going to be taking a look for Venus. That is all I originally knew. If we’re looking for Venus, then that means we need to be looking close to sunset or sunrise, and it turns out to be sunset inn 2028. Taking a slightly closer look, it does look incredibly bright, we’re seeing Venus at a half and it is magnitude -4.4 there, reduced to 4.18 due to the atmosphere. It is incredibly bright, it’s about as bright as Venus can get, and we’re seeing it nice and far from the Sun. There’s nothing in particular around it, which means that there isn’t going to be an occultation or conjunction, but it does look incredibly far from the Sun. Even though it looks further from the Sun than normal, it is still the same distance from the Sun. From the perspective of Venus, it’s distance from the Sun hasn’t changed, it just appears extra far from the Sun. Moving through the year, Venus does have close conjunction with the Moon and Saturn earlier in 2028, but that isn’t the exceptional thing. I realized in the video that this greatest elongation is particularly great due to the angles. Having done a little further research, this is in fact the highest Venus appears above the evening sky, at least in recent or soon times. Venus gets incredibly far from the Sun or at least appears to stay very far from the Sun because of the angle at which we’re seeing it.

Just a month ago we got to see Venus above the Sun, we saw Venus at sunset and at sunrise on the same night. It does look like during the 2028 elongation, it’s reaching its greatest point around the 18th, maybe a little after, but as well as being a very great elongation, this particular elongation seems to be lasting for quite a while as well. Venus is right next to Saturn at one point, only for Saturn to fall away over months. Venus remains above the Sunset until it’s joined by Mercury a little bit later in its orbit, leading to another conjunction.

Venus is almost exactly on the ecliptic during that orbit. Rather than appearing above the Sun on eit is behind it, it is almost directly in line with the Sun, making its orbit almost level with ours. one of the ways that Venus appear to hang in the sky for longer is if it remains on the ecliptic around the elongation. The ecliptic line I simulate to check is of dates, so it is marked for dates, which appear to slide behind the Sun as we orbit, similar to the zodiacal constellations. Although Venus does cross from above to below the ecliptic, it hugs incredibly close to it for this entire half-orbit of Venus. Venus is going to come out from behind the Sun in late 2027, and with no atmosphere we see Venus slide past Mars and Mercury, staying almost exactly on the ecliptic. As such, t looks like Venus and the Earth are pretty much on the same plane, which should explain why we’re seeing Venus for so long in 2028. Venus’s year is a little bit shorter than our year, but the Earth and Venus are both moving around the Sun together. If we’re both moving in a similar way at a similar time, if our orbits line up just right, then it can look like Venus is staying in our sky for longer than usual or that it appears closer than usual. This particular cycle is a long one and we’re definitely seeing it very far from the Sun at its greatest elongation.

That event is only in 2028, not too far in the future. There is a pretty good chance that I will still be creating content just a few years into the future, so that one I do feel confident saying that we’ll be able to come back and take a look at it. The very next one is much more distant, we’re looking all the way forward to 2097. Maybe I will still be recording videos, it’s certainly not impossible, but I do feel like it’s less likely. We’re looking forward to 2097 here and I don’t have a particular date to look for, I just have a planet to look for, the planet Mars. We’re going to move through the night and possibly the year in order to find Mars. We’re looking, not a hundred years into the future, but quite far into the future, and yet all of the constellations are staying the exact same. We have to look an incredible amount of time into the future for constellations to change, much further than this.

Beginning at the beginning of 2097, Mars is visible just before sunrise. We can follow Mars across the sky, until it gets blocked out by daytime. It is bright enough to see in the city, though it’s low in the sky for us here in Ireland. We’re seeing it,at just magnitude 0.5. That is still quite bright, about as bright as Saturn and brighter than most stars. It is a little bit fainter than Saturn, but it does look like it gets pretty bright during 2097, as it is far from its brightest here. Mars is usually brightest at opposition, when we see it in the middle of the night rather than close to sunrise. We’ll have to start moving through the year to bring it to its brightest.

It quickly falls down to minus one, which means it is getting brighter. It continues down to minus two, which looks like Mars at its brightest. It then falls down to minus 2.8. The lower the number, or the “bigger” the negative number, the brighter the object. This value will be getting reduced due to the atmospheres, so extinction will vary based on how high it is in the sky. We are seeing the ecliptic very low as this is summertime. We’re looking into 2097 during the summer, so the ecliptic is going to be high during the day with our high summer Sun and low at night, with our low summertime planets and Moon. This isn’t a very well known phenomenon, but the planets and the Moon are lower when they’re at their highest in the middle of the night in the summer compared to winter. Nevertheless, there is Mars at minus 2.8, reduced to minus 2.18 or so for us in Ireland. That’s still incredibly, incredibly bright, brighter than the stars. If we could take a look for Jupiter or Sirius, either one would be a good comparison here, but neither is up in the summer of 2097. Having checked, Sirius peaks at just about minus 1.46, making Mars brighter than any star here. Jupiter at its oppositional peak is minus 2.94, but that is only for a certain portion of the year. Mars here is brighter than Jupiter’s average. Venus is back up in the morning in 2097 and they are both in the sky together. Venus is there -3.9, almost -4, Mars is there at -2.8, so almost -3, there’s only a magnitude of a difference between them.

2097 looks like a good year to make a comparison between the brighter and fainter points of Mars as well. From Mars at that incredibly bright brightest we’ll start pulling back, getting closer to morning time and Mars drops to just minus 0.24. It changes by 2 full degrees of magnitude just a few months, and magnitude is a sort of a log scale. Each step of magnitude is about a 2.5 times increase or drop in brightness, so 2 degrees means it is five times brighter. These differences are greater the greater the magnitude. A double the brightness of a magnitude 2 object is a lot greater of an increase than double the magnitude of a magnitude 6 object. The mean opposition magnitude of Mars is around minus 2, but we’re seeing it at almost a whole degree brighter than that when we get up to its opposition that we’re seeing in 2097. The opposition point is when MArs is directly behind the Earth, and of course one way we can see how close we are to the opposition point is how full Mars is. In 2097 we’re only getting it to 99.8% full, presumably due to the angle. This is something that we’ve run into with Mars before, not seeing it at 100% full even at opposition.

We are looking pretty far into the future here, 2097, but if you are young enough, then hopefully this piece will still be in existence and you’ll be able to make that comparison between the beginning of the year when Mars is almost on the far side of the Sun, to this part of the year where Mars is much closer to us and incredibly bright, much brighter than I’ve ever seen Mars. Still, we’re not looking too far into the future for that one compared to the next one.

Next we’re going all the way forward to the 2700’s, all the way to 2729. We’re going forward to the 8th of September, and we can see that Mars is quite bright there as well. We are looking for Mars again so this lines up pretty well. Mars here is up to minus 2.8 yet again. Mars doesn’t get significantly brighter, but it is incredibly bright. It does look like Mars regularly, every few hundred years or so, Mars does seem to be able to get these incredibly bright brights, these incredibly high brightnesses. It looks to me like it gets a little bit brighter on the 10th, but even there on the 8th, it is incredibly bright, much brighter than we’d normally see Mars. We can see it’s much brighter than Saturn, it would be brighter than Mercury, and brighter than Jupiter is most of the time. Jupiter is in the sky with Mars in 2729, though it is low and getting extincted by the atmosphere. Jupiter is there at just minus 1 while Mars is at minus 2.85. So we’re seeing Mars there as the second brightest planet, the brightest planet in the sky because we’re not seeing Venus. At least, we’re not seeing Venus here in Ireland on those particular dates, it’s too close to the Sun, you might see Venus if you’re closer to the equator.

That far forward in 2729 on the 8th of September, Mars is going to be the brightest planet visible in the sky, and with our view there in 2097, with Mars being pretty much that same brightness as well, the second brightest thing in the sky after Venus, instead of Jupiter being the second brightest thing in the sky. I hope you have this to look forward to, and I hope you get to see Venus’s very long elongation in 2028, of course that’s not too far in the future so we may get a chance to look at that again.

If you enjoyed this piece please do like it, you can also subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel if you’d like to see more so thank you very much for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.