Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are going to continue looking into the future for some interesting future events. If you’d like to know what the sky is going to look like for July, just take a look back at a couple of previous posts on this website. I looked at the night sky in July, what different things are coming up in this month, in two pieces now, one with an attached Irish language video. Of course, the two articles are a little bit different, so I encourage you to read both.

In this video we are going to be looking forward to the year 2024, and we’re looking all the way forward to the very beginning of October. When I take a look into the future to look at future events, I very often don’t know what I’m looking for. I’ve been told what date to look at and roughly where to look in the sky, but other than that, I am going in blind. I’m taking a look for something in the sky based on a suggestion and I don’t know what it might be. Of course, looking at the whole sky to try and find some random event is tricky. There’s always lots of things going on in the sky, but finding the rare event that is worth looking forward to can be tricky. For this one, I was told to look in the constellation of Leo, more specifically around the star Regulus, which will be coming up in the morning in October. As Leo rises, it looks like Venus is right on top of Regulus. That might explain why I couldn’t find Regulus, Venus is where Regulus should be. So this is at least a very close conjunction if not an occultation, so let’s take a closer look and find out exactly which it is. We’ve seen in previous pieces recently that Venus of course, passes by Regulus quite often. This time however, Venus and Regulus are much closer together than before, at their closest just as they rise here in Ireland.

We’ve seen close conjunctions of Saturn, Venus and Regulus all together, so we know that Venus passes close to Regulus. By removing the ground we can follow Venus and Regulus under the horizon, seeing them get closer and closer together. I think this is the first time we’re getting Venus occulting Regulus. This will really looks amazing, Venus and Regulus perfectly, perfectly lined up, but it’s not going to be visible from Ireland. Yet again we need to go on a little bit of a hunt around, to find somewhere where this will be visible. From Ireland, Venus and Regulus are still under the horizon when they align. If we move eastwards to somewhere where they have already risen at this time, they should be up for a while before the Sun rises.

Moving from Ireland into Eastern Europe isn’t quite far enough, that’s a very cautious jump across the planet. We need to move by pretty big distances to really noticeably change the time zone. However, Venus and Regulus are closer to the horizon from there, so we are moving in the right direction. We’re getting there, but we will have to jump quite a bit further. Once we are far enough east for them to be above the horizon, we can take a closer look to make sure that they are still aligned. It turns out that they’ve shifted a little bit, Venus isn’t exactly in the center of Regulus, as it was. That’s where I left it, I left Venus in the center of Regulus when we looked at it in Ireland, and it seems to have moved even though the time is barely moving. We are moving through time second by second, but that’s not by very much.

With the ground and atmosphere back on, we can tell that we’ve made it to somewhere where this occultation is up and visible. It’s just above the sunrise, so still barely visible. Taking a closer look, Venus is perfectly occulting Regulus, and it looks like from this location they stay above the horizon for the whole thing. You can watch the whole occultation happening if you have a telescope, letting you see Venus wiping occulting Regulus and sliding off the otherside. If we go through a couple of days, we can see Venus hopping from one side to the other, crossing Regulus in the middle. there we go. Sitting at still around 52 degrees north, we’re now 86 degrees east. That puts us in Russia, around the Altai region, just above Mongolia, Kazakhstan and China. Moving south through Xianxiang and Tibet brings us down into Nepal and Bhutan, then India and Bangladesh, all on the line to see this occultation. Jumping closer to the equator brings us to 23 degrees north, just next to Bangladesh in Jharkhand, in India.

Now we are closer to the equator Venus and Regulus are not as perfectly aligned as they were. It doesn’t look like Venus is going directly across the center, it seems to be a little to the side here. Closer to the equator, they’re both even higher in the sky when the occultation occurs. It is unfortunate that we won’t get to see that perfect occultation happening from here in Ireland, but it does look like there is a large portion of the world that will get to see this happening. From the right location, you’ll get to watch it happen over the course of a couple of days, if you go out the day before and the day after and make a comparison as to where Venus is, you’ll see Venus visibly moving differently to the stars and crossing over Regulus.

We’ll quickly hop back to our default location back here in Ireland, and of course, everything is going to be under the horizon while the occultation is happening. Bringing them back up lets us check just how close we can get, and they are very, very close. We can see a very close approach if we catch them just above the horizon. We’ll see them rise just after the occultation has happened, and then of course, they’ll vanish from our sky as it gets brighter. If we come back, there’s still quite a big distance between them the day before the occultation. It’s not visible from Ireland, but it’s definitely visible over large chunks of the world, and that is going to be a great one if you have a telescope. Even if you don’t have a telescope, a photo of the sky would very clearly show Venus occulting Regulus, especially if you have another photo of the sky from the day before or after showing Venus next to Regulus. We are looking quite far into the future here, again to 2044, but that is a particularly nice one to catch, around the 2nd of October.

We have time for another future event and we’re going to keep ticking forward in time. We are going forward to 2050, and we are also coming back a couple of months to the month of August and forward a few days to the 15th. Now, in this case, I know that I am looking for Mars, but other than that, I have no idea. We are back in our normal default location, and Mars is up right through the middle of night, making it nice and easy to spot. This indicates that it is around its opposition. Taking a closer look at Mars, the first noticeable thing is that Mars is looking plenty bright there at negative 2.9. If we take a close look at Mars and just move through the night, we can see it rotating. Mars turns about halfway around in the time it takes us to turn about halfway around, as there’s only about an hour’s difference in our day lengths. This can be seen with the face of Mars changing as we go through the night. Moving through a few days, I’m not seeing any occultations or conjunctions, just that Mars is very bright, almost negative third magnitude.

That is very bright for Mars, so there is a good chance that that is why I was told to look at Mars on this date. If we very quickly click on Venus, it is down at negative 4th magnitude, ignoring extinction by air masses. Mars is still a little fainter. Moving to morning time we can compare to Jupiter. Jupiter is technically above the horizon, but not visible or at least not easily. Either way, we can click on it and see how bright it is. Jupiter is at negative 1.76. So that means Mars is brighter than Jupiter in the sky in 2050 on the 15th of August. If we go through a few days here, I think it’s reaching peak magnitude maybe on the 12th, and it is definitely very bright through aspan of dates. Thanks to Venus setting with the Sun, pretty much, it’ll be tough to see Venus in the sky. We’re just about catching it there at sunset, if we move forward a couple of days, it’ll be gone. Jupiter is barely coming up in the morning, we’re just barely catching Jupiter a few days forward, if we move back a few days, it’s out of the way. For the vast majority of the night, especially with the Moon out of the way, Mars will be the brightest thing above the horizon for the vast majority of the night, once we’re through to 2050. In 2050, on the 15th of the 8th, we’ve got Mars for the vast majority of the night appearing to be the brightest object in the sky, rather than Venus or Jupiter, So that’s definitely an interesting occurrence, definitely not a common one.

Of course, that is decades and decades into the future. If we begin just by pulling back to this year, we’re still looking into the future. I feel like looking all the way forward into October or even August this year is still looking pretty far into the future. This year, that puts Mars closer to behind the Sun than it’s opposition. From Ireland, Mars almost pops up at sunset, but it’s just a little too close to the Sun to be visible. Regardless, it’s just magnitude 1, not even negative 1, just first magnitude. We can get closer to opposition, for a more fair comparison, if we move back in time. This gets Mars up a little bit closer to midnight as we come back earlier this year. Mars reached its peak this year back in January, a peak of negative 1. It’s a pretty big jump to go up to nearly negative 3, and we can see that variation in Mars brightness over decades. Of course, Mars varies in brightness every year, reaching a peak when it’s directly behind us and then going down when it’s coming around the Sun. However, the height of that peak, how bright Mars actually gets, that varies over the course of decades depending on how close we are to Mars when it reaches that opposition point. Coming back to this month this year, we’ve just about got Mars above the horizon at sunset, at a much more reduced magnitude 1.4 at the moment. We have looked at high, bright peaks of Mars before, if you take a look back at some of my other future piece, or past pieces looking into the future.

I do hope that you enjoyed this piece. I am planning on making a question and answer piece soon, so I think this is maybe the last chance to leave any questions in the comments, if you have any. I hope that you did enjoy this piece, if you did, please do like it and if you like this kind of content, please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for watching, and hopefully I will see you back here next time.