Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are going to once again be taking a look into the far future. I have done this on previous occasions where we take a look, often quite far, into the future, and we will be going quite far into the future this time as well. The last event that we took a look at was such an interesting one that we only looked at one event in the entire piece. That’s not usually the case, generally I try to take a look at several different events, at least two in any given piece. However, this time I yet again got carried away, so it will be one interesting future event again.

This time, we are looking forward to 2080 and we are looking forward to March 15th. I never know exactly what I’m going to find when I go forward to these future dates, and I think it’s best to reveal them that way, to show my first impression of seeing whatever the event may be as it happens. I do of course get informed of some things, such as roughly where to look. It’s quite strange looking back at the March sky, with Betelgeuse in Orion and the Twins of Gemini up so high as the Sun sets, instead of seeing them just as they come up in the morning as we normally do in August. Those aren’t the constellations we’re looking for. I was told to look towards the constellation of Capricornus on the 15th of March 2080. Given that Capricornus currently rises around the time the Sun is setting, it’s up above the horizon when the Sun sets at the moment during August, so we’re going to have to move forward towards morning time at least. Capricornus must be reasonably close to the Sun in March. As we move from sunset to sunrise, we’ll catch Mars very close to Antares, which is always nice to see. That must be Scorpius, with we’ve got Ophiuchus up above it, which means that Capricornus is just a little further east.

As the sun rises, it becomes clear that we don’t need to worry about finding Capricornus. Unfortunately, the stars in the constellation of Capricornus are quite faint and they don’t make a very distinct shape. There is a sort of a triangle shape at the end of Capricornus, but it’s always very low to the horizon. Or at least almost always low to the horizon here in Ireland, but we don’t need to worry about finding the constellation Capricornus this time. We’re looking for something cool in the sky and it looks like we’ve already found it just before sunrise, with Jupiter and Saturn in a very close conjunction. We are looking in the direction of Capricornus, but none of its faint stars are visible at sunrise. The bright planets, obviously close together, make it pretty clear what we’re supposed to be looking at. Taking a closer look, it looks particularly nice because Jupiter and Saturn are so close together that we can resolve the lunar systems of both planets in one field of view. Of course, this would be very difficult to achieve with a telescope. Most telescopes won’t have a field of view wide enough while also providing enough magnification, although we’re almost able to pull it off, and this is from Ireland. I almost always begin these views from Ireland, and being as far north as we are, the angle at which we see the planets isn’t always ideal. Closer to the equator, the planets rise higher in the sky and you get to see them in a little bit more darkness. If we can see it from Ireland, it should be easy at the equator.

Simulating the view through a medium sized telescope, a Meade ETX90, is just about enough. These telescopes are 90 millimeters or so across in aperture, about 3.5 inches, which is a reasonably big. Not very big, but these telescopes manage to be compact by being reflectors. A refractor that’s 90mm wide should be about a meter long, but reflectors can fold up the path of light into a smaller space. With such a telescope, we can see Jupiter and some of Jupiter’s moons. We can also see Saturn and Titan. This is a pretty amazing view coming up in 2080, and it’s a pretty amazing view even under less than ideal circumstances, viewing the conjunction so close to sunrise and so close to the horizon here in Ireland. In fact, if we take a click on Saturn, Stellarium indicates that it is being quite severely reduced in magnitude, by 2 degrees of magnitude. Getting reduced by two steps of magnitude is quite a lot as magnitude is a logarithmic scale. A difference of 2 is more than a factor of two, more than just twice. This reduction is due to the air masses in the way.

We’re going to move through a little bit of time before we change location. Changing location will almost certainly get us a better view of this close conjunction, and due to the speeds at which these planets move, we’re not, we’re not going to see too much of a change over short periods of time. Certainly on the 15th and on the 16th are the only times that count, to me, as close conjunctions, that’s pretty much as good as we’re going to see them. The 15th is a little bit better, and of course I started with sunset on the 15th and ended up moving into the morning of the 16th. The 15th is what I was told to look for, and I can see why, it is even better. On the 15th, we’ve got all four of the Galilean moons of Jupiter visible. Taking a closer look, we can see a couple of Jupiter’s other moons. At last count, I believe Jupiter has around 95 moons, whereas Saturn has now crossed over the two century mark to over 200 moons, about 274 of them total. We can see some of Saturn’s moons as well, but of course Saturn, much further away from us than Jupiter, so even though we’re seeing them here in a similar field, Saturn is far, far behind Jupiter in this instance. It is almost a zyzygy, 3 planetary objects in a row counting the Earth, but they’re not quite in a row. The planets are on a slightly different plane, they’re inclined differently to the ecliptic. We should be able to draw a straight line through the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn if we were looking at a flat 2D top down representation of the solar system, or perhaps from some other angle, but in three dimensions they don’t really line up. This is why it isn’t an occultatio, we can see that Jupiter is almost over Saturn.

We’re going to start by going to the equator, because things will be much higher above the horizon from the equator. I almost aim off the west coast of Africa when I’m aiming for the equator. Those of you who watch the attached videos have probably noticed that when I’m trying to find the equator, I don’t always click on land. There is a point just off the coast of West Africa where the hemispheres line up, directly on the prime meridian and the equator. The location is known as Null Island, 0 degrees north and 0 degrees east, but there is no actual island at the location. We won’t move on to dry land for now, we’ll keep things in line pretty much with where we would have been here in Ireland, more or less, and we’ll just go close enough to the equator. This is just so that we can see these planets rising more directly above the horizon. That brings Mercury and Venus into the sky as well. We passed Mars earlier, but it is also still up. So that gives us Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Saturn all in a row, and the Moon. Uranus is out there somewhere as well, not too far from the conjunction. I wouldn’t be surprised if Neptune wasn’t too far away either, but maybe we’ll take a quick look for Neptune at a later date.

For now, we are looking at the conjunction in an incredible level of darkness, because we’re down at the equator so the sun rise hasn’t really begun. We are still simulating our view from the city, even though the ocean off the coast of West Africa is going to be a pretty perfect dark sky, given that there won’t be any light pollution in the middle of the ocean. However, we won’t simulate that darkness, I just want to show the way in which they’re rising so much higher above the horizon that we’re able to see them in darker conditions than sunrise in Ireland. With a big telescope, a 10 inch aperture Meade LX200, we can see several members of Saturn’s system of moons as well as Jupiter’s. Increasing the magnification much more would reduce our field of view too much to see both at the same time. The only reason that I’m able easily look at these planets “free”, without losing track of them at this magnification, is because time is paused. If time was actually running, at this level of magnification the drift of view is perceptible. The Earth is turning, we’re turning away from these planets, so you have to keep chasing them. in this case, that may be worth it, as we are seeing Jupiter’s stripes and a little bit of Saturn’s rings, all in one go. Of course, this is way forward in 2080, but it is a very impressive conjunction.

Let’s see what happens if we go to a different longitude, just to see if that makes a difference to how we’re perceiving their relative positions. Jupiter and Saturn are incredibly far away from us, so moving across the surface of the Earth isn’t going to change our perspective on Saturn and Jupiter by that much. If we try and make a triangle by moving few hundred kilometers across the Earth, that would be the base of a triangle with a point way out by Jupiter and Saturn. Such a triangle it going to be pretty close to a straight line, when its base is just a few hundred kilometers and its other edges are on the order of hundreds of millions of kilometers. Those factors would make for a very tight triangle, so moving place doesn’t make too much of a difference to our view. Even though we are after changing time zone after moving across the surface of the Earth, it looks looks like pretty much everywhere on the surface of the Earth, especially if you’re around the equator, you should be able to see it. In the video, I check South America and Maritime Southeast Asia, two quite populous areas close to the equator so that maximizes the chance of people being able to see it.

Really the mornings in March 2080, even if it wasn’t for this conjunction, are going to be fantastic if you’re at the equator. I don’t think we’ll be able to see Mercury and Venus from here in Ireland, but I will go back and double check. We can see that things look like they’re happening at a slightly different angle from different locations, if we go through a few dates, the planets are still pretty much at their closest at the 15th from everywhere. For some area of the planet, it will be sunrise as these planets reach their very closest in the sky. With no atmosphere in the way, we can see them reach their closest as we move through time, but they don’t seem to change position drastically. We can also see the speed at which those Galilean moons are moving, so from different parts of the planet, all looking at sunrise but for different subjective sunrises, you’re going to have the moons in different positions as well, which is going to lead to some pretty nice photographs.

This is already becoming a longer piece, but I do want to come back to the default location, Ireland. I don’t think we’re going to have much chance of seeing Venus or Mercury, the angles are very much against us. We’ve got Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, easily visible even from the city. Mercury would maybe be visible in the countryside rather than in the city. Taking a closer look down at the horizon over in the east, it looks like neither Mercury nor Venus are going to be visible. Partly, I’m sure, because of the extinction of the atmosphere, partly because of the light of the Sun. Either way, we have that very close conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn. From here in Ireland, it is going to be visible, but a closer look isn’t very achievable with a telescope due to the light. It is still a nice conjunction that’s coming up a little bit further in the future, I do hope that you get a chance to see it. We will come back to the present time in the next piece and take a look at some things that are happening in August this year, but here is a preview of something very far in the future. If you’re not planning on getting up early in the in the morning in 2080, now you don’t have to, we’ve already had a preview here.

I do hope you enjoyed this piece, if you did, please do like it. If you’d like to see more from me, then you can subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for reading, and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.