Caoimhín's Content

First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone who has subscribed to my YouTube channel. I am delighted to be up at 500 subscribers, a little bit more now, so hopefully that number will continue to grow. In some of the most recent installments, I have taken a look at things that commenters have suggested, so I want to use this as another opportunity to encourage people to ask questions. If there’s something you’d like to see or something you’d like to know more about, leave a question in the comments below, here oron my YouTube or on my Instagram. I will do a question and answer style piece in the near future as long as I get enough questions. So if you have any questions about space, astronomy or anything at all, please do ask. I would like to dedicate a video to answering questions that people have, whatever they may be. So if you have a question, please to ask it in the comments because I would like to answer any questions that are coming up.

In a recent piece when we looked into the night sky in July. We saw that Jupiter and Venus will be getting quite close together. A bit further into the future, into August, they pass right by each other in a close conjunction. A commenter on the associated video asked when Sirius, Venus and Jupiter would all be in the sky together. Continuing to push into the future, we see Sirius rising just a little bit into September. In early September, Jupiter and Venus aren’t as close together as they were in August. However, the planets, Jupiter, Venus and all of the others, they can never get too close to Sirius in the sky. This is simply because Sirius is so far below or south of the ecliptic, Sirius would be above the ecliptic if you’re viewing from the southern hemisphere. Either way, we don’t have to wait long to have these three objects in the sky all together, all at the same time. Venus and Jupiter are the two brightest planets, the brightest objects that we only see at nighttime, and Sirius the brightest star, are all there together. The Moon, of course is also up, and it is the second brightest object in the sky overall, with the Sun being the brightest object as seen from the Earth. Out of the objects that we can see at night, the Moon is brighter than Venus or Jupiter, but Venus is the brightest object that we cannot see during the day, at least not without some assistance. On the 11th of September 2025, we will have Venus, Jupiter and Sirius all visible in the sky together in the morning, so you can make a comparison between these bright objects.

I am always happy if somebody has a question or something they would like to see, I’m always happy to take a look forward and check out when things are going to be visible to show you. We can see that a triangle is being formed by the two planets and star. I’m not quite sure but it looks like a scalene triangle, and I don’t think that the angle formed by Jupiter is a right angle, not quite at least. They do form a nice triangle, all visible in the morning, really fr quite a good part of early September. If we go through another couple of days, the Moon will come down a little bit closer to the planets, passing each of them. Unfortunately, moving into the future will push Venus and Jupiter away from each other in the sky and it also pushes Venus closer to the Sun. This means that it’s not going to be visible for as long. Going the other way, even if we push back to the end of August, then we can see Sirius, along with Mercury, Venus and Jupiter, it just is a little bit tricky to see Sirius there in that glow of sunrise.

We already looked ahead to September of this year due to the view on the 19th. A commenter suggested that there would be a nice triple conjunction on September the 19th 2025, when we will have Venus, the Moon and Regulus all close together in the sky. This looks nice even just as a conjunction, but I spent a little bit of time trying to find places where Venus would be occulted by the Moon and I wasn’t able to achieve it. It was only visible to me from here in Ireland during the day, parallax unfortunately made it a little bit difficult to see from other locations at this latitude. Changing the longitude enough to see the occultation in the dark, at sunrise, meant travelling pretty far across the Earth. Moving so far, about 6,000 kilometres, meant we were viewing things from a different angle.

Thankfully the very same commenter who told me about this upcoming conjunction let me know of a slightly better location where we might be able to see it just a little bit better. We’re going all the way up to 80 degrees north, so quite close to the North Pole. We are also moving to 153 degrees East. This isn’t that far, given that we in Ireland are just a few degrees west, we’re only moving 30 or so degrees east of our location. Often, rather than east or west, western longitudes are given in the negative. In that system, we’re going from -7 degrees, past the 0/180 of the prime meridian, and out the other side to the east. The longitude was precisely 153.3, but 153 degrees, 26 minutes and 45 seconds, is pretty close, so that’s what we’ll use.

As I said, that puts us way up close to the north pole. 80 degrees north is well within the Arctic Circle. There’s not much land up there at 80 degrees, and as we can see with this east longitude of 153, we’re certainly in the Arctic Sea. Following Venus and the Moon across the sky, we can see them overlap, low to the horizon, during twilight. I wouldn’t have expected to catch this at sunset, but it does look like sunset is the time to get out and look. We can see a very narrow Crescent Moon, the bright star Regulus just underneath, and that haze of Venus, slipping behind the Moon. The sun has just set, so we are able to catch it at sunset, which seems so strange given that it was visible closer to sunrise from Ireland. Then again, the invisible beginning of the occultation, happened at around 1 o’clock in the afternoon. The again, seeing this just after sunset is more or less the same as just before sunrise, more so than for most locations. We can see that this occultation is happening at sunset which is just before the Sun rises, right through midnight.

Once we’re through to September and when we’re way up at the North Pole, the Sun barely sets at all. That’s really why we’re able to do this at all. Of course, this is a very out of the way location, so I’m sure that not many of you will be able to achieve this view. However, if any of you are up at 80 degrees north, then you should be able to catch this happening. The Sun briefly sets, and the sky remains very, very bright at 11:15, all the way through to midnight and the physical midnight close to 2 o’clock. We can see the Sun’s glow almost due north. That’s around when the occultation is going to be visible. If you are very far north in the land of the midnight Sun, then as we’re coming into winter and as the Sun is very low in the sky, we’ve got that nice occultation to catch.

Thank you very much to the commenter who told me where to look from. I love taking a look at these things in the sky and I love getting surprised by them, so hopefully I will be continued to be supported by all of you. Not just in watching my videos and reading my articles, but in letting me know what you want to see, letting me know of these cool things coming up. There’s so much going on with space and the sky, stars and planets, it’s impossible to know every cool event that’s coming up, so I am always happy to take information from anyone who is willing to tell me about these other things that we can see in the sky. Then I can go and double check them just to make sure that they are actually happening.

We’ll quickly pull back to our normal location here in Cork City in Ireland, and we’ll come back to the present day as well. Of course, the occultation isn’t going to be visible from here in Ireland. For us, Venus, the Moon and Regulus, are setting before the sunset, so it is only thanks to that very extreme angle at which we’re seeing things from way up north in September that we’re able to catch it. This is definitely a unique occultation/conjunction combination, definitely a very interesting thing to see, and we do have several months before it comes. We’ve got plenty of time to look forward to that and charter some boats for the arctic sea.

Next time we will take a look ahead to the month of July and then in a subsequent piece we’ll take a look at some more upcoming events, further in the future. Following that, I’ll answer whatever questions are left in the comments, or at least as many as I can get to, presuming that I get enough. I do hope that you enjoyed this piece, I of course really enjoy making them. If you did enjoy this one, then please do like it and subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel so that I know to continue making these things. Thank you very much for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.