Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to yet again look into the future to look at some interesting upcoming events. We are going to start by looking just a little further ahead this year, we will just be looking forward to the 19th of September.

We’re going to go forward to the appropriate date and we’re going to have a look around. Some of you may now be familiar with this process, you may know that I am occasionally told of certain dates to look at certain events that are happening in the sky, but I don’t know what they are before I go and take a look. Knowing the date I can take a look around and see what interesting thing is happening in the sky. If you have any interesting events that you are interested in seeing then feel free to leave a comment here or on my YouTube channel to suggest them. Looking at the east just before sunrise on the 19th of September, we’ve got the Moon in between Jupiter and Venus. That part is immediately obvious. Moving a little later in the morning the Moon passes really close to Venus. Taking a slightly closer look, the star Regulus is right next to Venus. This is a really nice triple conjunction and a pretty close conjunction, with the Moon and Venus getting closer and closer as the Sun rises.

I normally view these things from Ireland, but an occultation of Venus is absolutely worth traveling a little bit. We won’t have to travel too far, just to a slightly different location on the Earth. The Sun rises in Ireland before the Moon occults Venus, so we want it to be dark later, we want it to stay dark until the Moon occults Venus. This means we’re going to have to move further west, away from Ireland. We’re going to quickly hop to a slightly better location, but just before we do, Jupiter is up with these objects as well, just a little higher in the sky. The 19th was the date that I was told to look at and I was told to look for a triple conjunction. With Venus moving right past Regulus over the course of these dates, and the Moon almost occulting Venus, that must be the event. Moving earlier in September, to bring the Moon closer to Jupiter, the Moon ends up much above the ecliptic and away from Jupiter. Saturn is also up, on the opposite side of the sky, but the Moon remains pretty far from Saturn even as they reach their closest. Of course, those planets are following the ecliptic, roughly, while the Moon is more following our equator. Occultations are rare for more or less the same reason that eclipses are uncommon.

Very often the Moon won’t occult the planets, but here it is going to be occulting Venus, but from Ireland that will be after the sunrise. It looks like we’re not going to have to change our latitude, just our longitude. Moving west to slightly south of Greenland brings us closer, but we’re going to have to go a little bit further. We probably could, if we were in the countryside, wait a little bit longer before the sunlight blocks out Venus, but of course we’re not on dry land slightly south of Greenland, so no one would see it anyway. Pushing into Canada should bring us closer again. Taking a closer look, and they are still just a hair apart. Going a little further, still in northern Canada, but a little bit closer to the center of the landmass, keeps the Moon and Venus under the horizon, they should be occulting just as the Moon is rising. Unfortunately, from this position it seems like we’re still missing the occultation. I did accidentally move further north on the planet, I was just trying to come westward, but I moved a few degrees further north as well. Coming a few degrees further south still doesn’t help. I may not be able to cause this occultation to line up. while the Sun is under the horizon. This may be the kind of thing that’s just not easily visible, though I feel like it should be. I really do feel like I should be able to make this line up, I should be able to force this occultation to occur. Only after recording the attached video did it occur to me that parallax may be the issue. Moving the thousands of kilometers west may have shifted our view far enough to put Venus and the Moon out of alignment.

Luckily, this puts the Moon and Venus really close together and just next to Regulus. This may in fact look better than an occultation because we can see all three of the objects so close together. However, it is a little bit frustrating that this occultation is happening, just while the Sun is above the horizon, for us here in Ireland. There is a reasonable distance between the Moon and Venus when this occultation occurs and the Sun, so with the right kind of protective equipment on your telescope, you just might be able to enjoy this even from Ireland. The occultation will happen just a little before 1 o’clock, so the sky will be as bright as it can get. If you were correctly equipped with a telescope to see this occultation happening during the day, then you might be able to catch the occultation, though Regulus would be obscured. I would like to see how close Venus and Regulus get to each other as well, so that means getting the atmosphere out of the way. They don’t end up particularly close, by moving through time we can see there that Venus doesn’t end up much closer to Regulus over time. It seems like the moment of occultation is about the closest they’re going to get, and that view is going to look particularly nice from northern Canada. Coming back to sunrise, it looks like that’s where Venus and the Moon are going to look their closest and visible to the naked eye, even though they don’t quite look like they’re occulting. Then again, I was told to look ahead to a nice triple conjunction and it looks like that’s it, I wasn’t told to look ahead to an occultation, so not getting to see an occultation isn’t the greatest surprise, they are a rare event.

Of course, that event is happening this year, so I’m going to be able to revisit this in just a few months time. Most of the future events that we look forward to here are significantly further away. They aren’t always astronomical timescales, but looking forward to 2060 to see Halley’s Comet for example. That is something I am going to do again soon, although I have previously done so, if you’d like to go back through the posts and take a look. That’s looking decades into the future, we’re going to look a decade into the future again for this next event. We’re going forward to the 24th of July, and I know that I’m supposed to be looking in the constellation of Leo, but we are going up to 2037. I know that I need to look in the constellation of Leo and given that we’re looking at just next month, it won’t be too hard to find. We’ve already looked at the sky for July recently, when we’ve been looking forward to Mercury’s greatest elongation this July. Thanks to this, I know that Leo is setting almost with the Sun. The back end of Leo is still up at sunset, but it is pretty much setting with the Sun.

Looking at sunset on the 24th of July 2037 from Ireland will make this difficult. I was told to look in the constellation of Leo, which is low along the horizon and partly obscured from here. To make this easier on myself, we’re going to get rid of the ground, and immediately I can see why I was told to look at this date. Although it would be incredibly hard to see from anywhere that’s not the equator, there is a fantastic group of objects all together in the sky. Venus, Saturn, Regulus and Mercury are all super close together. As I mentioned in pretty recent piece, where we looked just a little into the future, Mercury moves quite quickly. By moving through time we can check if anything gets closer together or occults anything. Moving through a couple of days, the planets do shuffle around, but what we’re not seeing any occultation. Of course, I’d love to see an occultation, they’re on my mind now, but at least we’re getting all these objects all together right above the sunset. Unfortunately, they end up far too close to the horizon for us to see them here in Ireland. Instead, we’ll go down to the equator see if we can see them rising up. We can. Very much in the same vein as the first event that we took a look at, with Venus and Regulus having their close conjunction along with the Moon, here we’ve got Venus, Saturn, Regulus and Mercury, all really incredibly close together. From the equator, even assuming a view from the city, they are all up at sunset. Mercury is a nice distance from the Sun, of course we can double check in 2037 how close to Mercury’s greatest eastern elongation it is, but we won’t do that for now.

What we will do is we’ll go back to Ireland and to give ourselves a fighting chance, we’re going to get rid of the trees and buildings that could get in the way right off the bat. If they are going to be visible from here in Ireland, they’re only going to be visible when they’re very close to the horizon. The simulated zero horizon would be ideal, in real life looking out over the ocean or from a height. Venus is visible, being the brightest it emerges a little earlier and higher. I know the other planets aren’t too far away, but they will all end up lower as the sky darkens enough for them to shine through. Saturn does pop out very low in the sky, but we’re not seeing Mercury, let alone Regulus. If we zoom in a little bit, then Regulus does appear, which means Mercury is just a little bit lower in the sky again. Again, using your telescope, with this much light in the sky is not the safest thing to do, but without one Regulus and Mercury won’t be visible from here in Ireland. It looks like for this one, we may have to take a trip closer to the equator in 2037 if we want to see it.

At least we will get Saturn and Venus nice and close together. We won’t find out if they occult this time, we’ll wait until we get a little bit closer or if we look forward to a similar event again, otherwise I would end up clicking all around the world to see if they overlap. Of course, an occultation of Venus and Saturn would be really nice, so with the ground in the atmosphere out of the way we can take a closer look while we’re here. They do get very close there on the 22nd. It should look incredible, with Venus visible among, really in front of, Saturn’s moons. It looks like they will get this close when they are almost exactly at the opposite side of the Earth from Ireland. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to catch something like from here in Ireland, as it looks like it will be 11 o’clock in the morning for us. They are on the wrong side of the planet. We would have to shift our view to somewhere else, but for somewhere else that’s going to be a really nice close conjunction as well.

I hope you get to see some of these things, I hope you get to see the upcoming occultation in September this year in particular. Of course, we’ll review that this year a little bit later. I hope you get to see the quadruple conjunction of Venus, Saturn, Mercury and Regulus in 2037, we may take another look at that in the future, along with the close conjunction between Venus and Saturn and Saturn’s system of moons. I hope you get to see those things. Thank you for reading this piece, I hope that you enjoyed it, if you did, please like it, you can also subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel if you like this kind of content. Hopefully, I’ll see you back here next time.