Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are yet again going to be looking into the future and a little bit further than we have recently. I will of course, get back to all of the wonderful things happening this month, the eclipses, the occultations, the conjunctions, there’s lots of great stuff going on this month. For today however, we’re going to look decades into the future to an event that was suggested pretty far back now. We’re looking all the way forward to 2092 and all the way through to the 27th of March. Although we’re looking decades into the future, most things are going to be the same. We will have the same stars, the same constellations, it’s still the March sky. Of course, the planets are in positions that they may not get into until that far in the future. It takes a long time for some planets like Saturn to change position in the sky.

We are going to be looking for a planet, this time we’re looking for the planet Jupiter. Presumably if we’re looking for Jupiter then it is going to be visible in the sky, and it is up ahead of the Sun at sunrise. Taking a closer look, we can see the moons of Jupiter, but Great Red Spot isn’t quite visible. Jupiter is only just coming above the horizon for us here in Ireland, so there is a lot of dawn glow interfering with our view. We’ve got plenty of its Galilean satellites visible, but we are going to take away the atmosphere to see them better. Io and Europa line up as they orbit around, which is pretty cool, but not a major astronomical event. We’re going to take away the ground as well, so that we can follow this planet around the sky and look at it from lots of different perspectives that otherwise wouldn’t be visible from Ireland.Focussing on the 27th, as we move through time, we can see Io going in front of Jupiter. Moving back through from the 27th to the previous day, and through from the 27th through to the 28th without seeing too much change. We’re able to see the moons going around Jupiter, but I don’t think at any point they were all obscured behind Jupiter. That would be interesting, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Pulling out just a little bit lets us see more of the background stars, Jupiter Is passing through or passing past anything particularly interesting. We’re looking into the constellation of Capricornus, which can be hard to recognize sometimes, it’s not the most obviously shaped constellation. By moving through time Jupiter does move, but it doesn’t move very far through the sky from our perspective. Jupiter takes a long time to orbit around the Sun, so we don’t see it moving particularly far over the course of a day or two. Jupiter doesn’t seem to be obviously moving through anything or occulting anything and it can’t be at opposition because it is too close to the Sun. If Jupiter was at opposition, we’d be seeing it directly behind the Earth. It’s there at magnitude negative 2.05, and we can see it gets dimmer as we move into the future, with Jupiter moving further from the Sun. It gets brighter as we move back, with Jupiter moving back around to the far side of the Sun. Jupiter would be brighter when it is close to directly behind the Sun because we’d be seeing a Full Jupiter. Of course, we can’t actually see it when it’s in that position. We’d see Jupiter less bright as it’s coming around to the position we could call a “Half Jupiter”. Of course, it never actually looks like a half, because it’s further from the Sun than we are, but it is still kind of stretched out at an angle, not shining on us directly the way that it is at opposition or conjunction, whether that’s directly behind the Sun or directly behind the Earth.

With all those options covered, we may not actually have an event on this date, or at least none I can fine. By moving through time we eventually get to an occultation of Jupiter by the Moon, on the 2nd of April, 2092, but the 27th of March was definitely the date that I was told to take a look at. Let’s just get back to the 27th of March. Jupiter is there, but not any event in particular. If anyone in the comments can help me out and maybe explain why I was told to look at this particular date, there must be something I’m missing. Maybe it’s not something that Stellarium shows very clearly, but it does look like we’ve got Jupiter moving the way it normally moves. It’s not yet in retrograde motion, it’s not occulting anything or getting occulted by anything on these particular dates, and I’m not seeing anything strange happening with its moons. Also, it can’t be at its brightest because it’s not at opposition. I’m at a loss with this one, but do let me know if you know of a reason why this thing in particular was suggested. We have, of course, gotten an opportunity to take a look into the future here, and that’s never a bad thing. We’re going to keep going. We’re going to look forward to another event that is also coming up in the distant future. For 2092, we will at least have Jupiter at sunrise on this date, so Jupiter will be visible.

We’re going forward again to the year 2104, so we’re getting out of this century and into the next. We’re going all the way forward to August and back a few days to the 21st. Now for this future event, I was told to take a look for Venus. We’re not seeing Venus there in the morning, we’ll move back in time to sunset. Just as the Sun is setting, we have Venus just barely visible from here in Ireland. It is very low in the sky, so let’s get rid of the trees that are getting in the way and take a closer look. It’s definitely looking very bright there, we’re seeing it at negative 3rd magnitude. Neptune’s really close by, so I’m thinking that this might be an occultation of Neptune. Let’s get rid of the atmosphere so we don’t have to worry about the sunlight that’s getting in the way. As we move ahead in time, Neptune and Venus draw closer together. At first it didn’t look like a perfect occultation, there was still a little bit of blue showing behind the pinkish Venus, but that must just be an artifact of the way Stellarium shows the sky. Neptune’s largest moon Triton is also quite clearly visible while we’re looking at Venus. This makes it look like Venus has gotten itself a moon. Of course, Venus doesn’t have any moons, but for a while it looks as if Venus has acquired the moon Triton from Neptune.

Taking a closer look at Neptune and zooming in, we can see it sliding behind Venus. Thanks to the phases of Venus, and we’re not seeing a full Venus, it looks like Neptune is disappearing a little bit before the visible portion of Venus actually gets in the way. That is an interesting thing that we can see happen with the Moon as well. If the Moon occults something in the right phase, then the object will disappear or reappear with a little bit of a lag because of the darker portion of the Moon that we can’t see. This makes it look like something is getting blocked out by a thing that’s not even there, which is of course really interesting. This event is nice and simple, an occultation of Neptune by Venus. It’s definitely not going to be visible from here in Ireland, just because Venus is so close to the Sun, we’d have to be closer to the equator to see this, but also this occultation is happening at a time when it’s not visible from here in Ireland.

We are going to very quickly take a look at this, firstly by going to go closer to the equator. That’s definitely going to help, but from Ireland’s longitude it is under the horizon. We need to be almost on the opposite side of the planet, so we’ll take a big jump right off the bat, and we’ll figure out the fine tuning after this. We’ll head right over the the Pacific, starting around Indonesia. This puts the Sun at its highest while Venus and Neptune are occulting each other. From this location we’ll have to be further to the east so that the Sun appears further to the west, just as its setting. That means wrapping around the map to the other side of the pacific, near the Galapagos Islands. Let’s see if that’s improved things, it has. The Sun is now very close to the western horizon, but not under it, so we’ll go a little bit further. I went in the wrong direction, or too far across the Pacific, with my initial jump, but that’s okay, we were only starting out roughly and then making finer adjustments.

Going all the way to the Caribbean puts Venus is just under the horizon as the occultation happens, so we’ll come back to South America. I do want to be very close to the equator, as the angle of the ecliptic will help keep the occultation higher in the sky. From off the coast of Ecuador and Colombia Venus is still above the horizon. We can take a closer look at Venus, Neptune should be nearly in place, we’ll have to move further forward in time a little bit for Neptune to go right behind Venus. From this location, all this happening while Venus is above the horizon, but not in darkness. I think it would be better if it happened with Venus closer to the horizon but under darker conditions. That means we need to move back a little bit, towards the land of South America. Just to give ourselves the absolute perfect chance, we’ll go with the absolute perfect zero horizon. From exactly at the equator we’ll have the best chance to see it. We’ll also go out into the countryside just to give ourselves the absolutely ideal view. We’re already making so many concessions, for one we must be floating on a boat in the middle of the ocean to catch this.

Finally we can see the occultation. With a powerful enough telescope, roughly from off the coast of South America, this seems like one of the best locations, possibly the best location to see this future occultation from. We can clearly see Venus, the sky is nice and dark, if you have a big enough telescope, Neptune would be visible as well. The entire thing should be visible from a dark location. starting just after the Sun setting, Neptune is there but clearly distinct from Venus. As we move forward through time, over the course of just about an hour, Neptune slides behind Venus. It pops out the other side, and then the planets set under the horizon. From this location, if you’re in the countryside close enough to the equator, it gives you the opportunity to see this whole occultation of Neptune by Venus.

Looking this far into the future, I think I might as well just say I hope you enjoyed this description, and you can check out the attached simulation as well. This is a very far future event, but maybe some of you will get to see it, if you’re reading this piece long after it was posted, then maybe you’re closer to the 2100s than we are and maybe you will get a chance to see this.

Most importantly, I hope that you enjoyed this piece. If you did, please do like it, if you like this kind of content, 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.