Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to yet again take a look into the distant future, or not so distant future to begin with, to take a look at some upcoming events. These are yet more events that have been suggested by commenters, though one is a review of a previously observed event. Some of you may now be familiar, as I have made a couple of posts like this in the past, but if somebody suggests a particularly interesting thing in the sky or a date that is worth looking at, I will take a look at it without knowing what I am going to see.

We’re going to begin by taking a look just a couple of years into the future, we are only going as far as 2028. We will be looking at the pre dawn sky on October 22. I didn’t know why the pre dawn sky on 22 October 2028 would be particularly nice, but just above the sunrise Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Mars are visible all there in a row. Saturn is in the sky as well, but it is further in the west. As long as you’ve got a full view of the sky, this is essentially the Parade of Planets, all of the planets that are visible to the naked eye are up at the same time. We are looking a few years into the future, so even though it takes the more distant planets, Uranus and Neptune, a long time to orbit the Sun, they probably have moved a little. The Pleiades are up towards the south, and Uranus has been quite close to the Pleiades for most of this year, it’s going to be back next to the Pleiades in the morning very soon. Taking a closer look, Uranus is still near the Pleiades, but now on their eastern side, closer to the Hyades. Over the course of three years here, Uranus has moved a little bit across the sky, but of course in that same amount of time we would have seen Mercury leap back and forth to either side of the Sun multiple times. These more distant planets do take a lot longer to noticeably move.

This of course means that Neptune shouldn’t be too far away from its current location ether. However, given how difficult Neptune is to observe, I mostly pointed it out recently in relation to Saturn, which moves much quicker. As such I’m not positive where it is and looking across the whole ecliptic at the correct level of zoom for Neptune to be labeled in Stellarium could take a while. Thankfully, searching shows that it is still in the “head” of Pisces, just under Pegasus. This is roughly where Saturn is now, but Saturn will have moved east in the intervening time, ending up closer to the “tail” end of Pisces, under Andromeda. It looks like it’s just under the horizon while the other planets are up. If we get it above the horizon enough, then it is earlier, Jupiter and Mercury haven’t risen yet. That does mean if you are willing to stay up for a reasonable portion of the morning, with a telescope, you can see all the planets. At 5 o’clock in the morning in October the sky will still be completely dark, instead of sunrise starting at almost 3 as it is here in Ireland during late June. Neptune is there in that darkness, it is visible, but possibly easier to see in the evening time. All of the planets that are visible to the naked eye and Uranus are up at the same time just an hour or so later when Mercury and Jupiter have risen. There is a nice close conjunction between Mercury and Jupiter on the 22nd, so that probably is the best date. Mars is also making a very close conjunction Regulus, with the bottom star in the sickle of Leo on the 24th as well. All of the planets will be up at the same time for the span of a few days, all of late October.

As all these things are passing so close together, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was other close conjunctions, or even occultations of stars, in the time around the 22nd of October. Maybe not for Mercury and Jupiter, but they are incredibly close together. Some telescopes may allow the viewing of Jupiter’s moons and Mercury at the same time, which looks fantastic. Both Mercury and Jupiter are very small dots, even if they are so close to us, so them lining up perfectly is rare. With Mars and Regulus, Regulus is so far away that it is a smaller point, easier to occult, but they do look like they’re separated by too great of a distance to occult. In this case, the angular distance across the sky seems to be too great for a simple change in our latitude to cause them to line up. Even without any occultations, having all of those planets in the sky together, another parade of planets, is nice to see. Neptune is not visible to the naked eye ever and is not visible in the sky for this parade, so this one is not quite the same as the parade of planets we had earlier this year. All the same, just a few years in the future, all the planets that are actually visible if you don’t have an incredibly big telescope, will be up at the same time. If you missed them for the most recent parade of planets, then this is the next chance, which is not incredibly unbelievable or unexpected. Having a parade of planets again in the near-ish future, at least one where it is all of the planets visible to the naked eye in the sky at the same time, isn’t too surprising. However, we do usually look a lot further into the future than this and we are going to go even further again, up to 2079.

I was given a little bit more information about this one. We’re going all the way forward to 2079, when there is going to be a close conjunction or occultation of Mars and Mercury. this is an event that we have already seen from Ireland, but it isn’t perfect from here. I’m not sure what time of year this will be happening at, but by going through the year a little bit, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. We know that anything involving Mercury is going to have to happen very close to sunset or very close to sunrise. So to make this a little bit easier on myself, instead of hopping between sunset and sunrise, we’re going to remove the atmosphere and take a look at the relative positions of Mercury and Mars. As they get closer together, it definitely looks to be almost an occultation, even from here in Ireland, on the 11th of August. The 11th of August isn’t too far away this year, but we’re looking at the 11th of August in 2079, so we are looking pretty far into the future. Moving back in time from midday, Mercury gets closer to Mars visibly. This is one way to see how fast Mercury moves, and It will be around the visual landmark of the Pleiades. Mars and Mercury set for us here in Ireland before they overlap, but that’s okay, we’re going to have to change location for this one anyway. Although the occultation would partially happen from our latitude at a different longitude, it’s not going to look its best here in Ireland, only appearing as a really close conjunction. Even from the correct longitude, or with the ground turned off, from this latitude it is almost a perfect overlap, but not exactly.

Thus, we are going to change location, and I was told that this looks best from the Middle East. The Middle East is a big region, large enough that the perfect occultation won’t be visible from all of it. It that does put us into a different time, meaning Mars and Mercury will be above the horizon and closer together than they we’re from Ireland. Looking at the sky from the Middle East means we’ll be seeing things a little bit earlier, the Middle East is further east than Ireland, so the Sun will hit it first. We’ll start from right in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula, that should be far enough to begin with. Pulling our focus back on the planets, it does look like it is perfect, overlap. At the right level of zoom it seems that we can see Phobos and Deimos around Mercury, with no Mars visible. It almost looks like Mercury got a pair of moons for itself. Of course it didn’t, of course that is Mercury just completely perfectly occulting Mars, millions of kilometers closer to the earth than Mars is. However, with the ground on, this is under the horizon. If I bring them above the horizon, they won’t be so perfect anymore, they will slide apart as the time changes. We need to go a little further east than where I had originally gone. Going further east means we will be shifting our perspective so that these things are already above the horizon, the Sun rises in the east before it rises here in the west. I was told to take a look in the Middle East, spanning from Egypt and the Levant to Iran. The East of Iran is, at least nearly, what many people call Southern Asia, but it feels more like the middle of the Afro-Eurasian continent to me. From a location near Pakistan or Afghanistan, it looks really close. We do of course want Mercury and Mars to be above the horizon while the Sun is still under the horizon. Here, it seems I have gone too far. The occultation is above the horizon when it occurs, but so is the Sun. We have to adjust this back for the time to work out. We need to move a little bit closer, a little bit nearer to the west in the nearer east.

Hopefully, we will be in the right location, in between the last two. These things can be a little bit finicky of course. In the case of an occultation of a planet by another planet, you really do have to be in the exact right location. Differences of kilometers really do matter. For anyone who didn’t get to see the recent total solar eclipses at their most perfect points, then you already know that if you’re a little bit away from the exact maximum of the eclipse, you might as well be a million miles away from the exact maximum of the eclipse. The occultations here are involving much smaller dots, and as such have far less leeway. It looks like we are at 33 degrees north and 51 degrees east, with the occultation above the horizon, long enough before the Sun to be visible. That looks like the exact perfect location, Just inland from the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. Close to the middle of Iran, looks to be the exact perfect place to see this perfect occultation in 2079. This isn’t that far in the future compared to some of the other things that we have taken a look at here before, but it is as far as we’re going this time.

I had planned to take a look even further into the future for this piece, but rather than taking a look hundreds of years into the future, I decided to spend the time finding out where the Mars and Mercury occultation absolutely perfectly lined up. That’s going to look amazing even through a small telescope, as long as you’re in the right location to see it before the glow of the Sun comes up. We have only taken a look at two future events this time, I do normally try to look at three, but for this one in particular, in order to do it justice it was worth spending the extra time to get it in the right location. We all, I hope, have October 22, 2028 to look forward to, that’s not too far in the future so I’m confident I’ll still be here to talk about it. The more distant one in 2079, it’s not out of the question, there is a chance that I’ll still be writing these pieces when Mercury and Mars have this perfect occultation. If I’m lucky enough, perhaps I’ll be able to travel to a location where it is visible perfectly, as it is at 33 degrees north and 51 degrees east.

I hope that you enjoyed this piece, I will have more videos very soon looking at similar future events. If you have future events, or if you’ve heard of something cool that’s happening in the future, or something cool that’s happening from a location where you won’t be able to see it, feel free to leave a comment and let me know. You can also head to my YouTube and comment there. If you did enjoy this piece then please do like it and you can also subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel if you’d like to see more content like this. Most importantly, I hope I’ll see you back here next time.