Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to take a look at something that I am fairly confident we will not be able to see here in Ireland. Some people might just barely see it from the countryside. Recently, I saw a newspaper headline, or really the headline of an online journal, saying that there would be a triangle formed by the Moon, Saturn and Mars early in the morning of the 14th. From Ireland, we are seeing at least the Moon and Saturn on the morning of the 14th, just coming up to 5 o’clock.

If we head out to the countryside, all the way to a fully pristine sky, Mars is barely from here in Ireland. Really, with a normal field of view, it probably isn’t. The human field of view can be quite wide if you include the peripheral vision, and under normal conditions, the triangle between Mars, Saturn and the Moon is missing its Martian corner. The Moon is only a very narrow crescent. If you take a closer look there is plenty of Earthshine, which I mentioned in a recent post. The narrow illuminated crescent is on the east with the Ocean of Storms, but the Sea of Tranquility, and what I call the football player on the Moon, is visible due to the Earth’s reflected light. The ecliptic is passing above the horizon at a very shallow angle for us and that’s really obscuring Mars and to a degree obscuring Saturn. Saturn is visible from a dark sky, but from a city sky straddling Bortle Classes 5 and 6, Saturn is barely visible. If we push earlier the sky gets darker, but that puts Saturn lower in the sky where it’s getting extincted by the atmosphere. This occurrence was big enough to have received some newspaper headlines, so I can only assume that it’s going to look nicer from other locations. In fact, it will definitely look nicer from other locations, but how nice?

I don’t think Mars, Saturn and the Moon are particularly close, but we’re going to jump down to southern Spain and southern Portugal. We’re still a little bit north of North Africa, just across the Straits of Gibraltar. I’m hopping down here because this puts us on the same latitude as some big cities in Europe, in the Middle East and some big cities in China as well as large cities in the United States. This latitude is almost along the top of the United States, places like Washington are roughly at this latitude. That’s certainly all it takes to see Saturn very clearly with the Moon. As we move closer to morning time, Saturn gets to a good height while the sky is still fairly dark. We’re no longer using the UTC +1 summertime used here in Ireland, which is good. This is really about 3:30 in the morning UTC. Of course this view will change depending on where you are on Earth, depending on your longitude, not just your latitude, because that will influence where the Moon is for your subjective sunrise. Of course, there isn’t really an objective sunrise, sunrise happens at all times UTC just at different locations on the planet. Either way, from our longitude here in Ireland, it is a pretty good triangle. It’s a bit of a wide, squat triangle maybe, but it definitely looks like a triangle.

Let’s see how that view changes if we head across the Atlantic. We’ll head over towards the Great Lakes region, really anywhere around the northeastern United States you will have a similar view, certain locations in Canada as well. We’re after moving into the nighttime side of the Earth so we have to wait until later for everything to rise. When they do the Moon is certainly closer to Mars than it is to Saturn, but it’s still forming a triangle and we’re still getting a reasonable view of Saturn and Mars. Mars is a little low for viewing in cities. Unless you’ve got a river or an alignment in the grid of streets that gives you a view to the east, Mars might be tricky, but Saturn is getting reasonably high so it won’t be too difficult to see.

We’ll hop across to the opposite extreme, we’ll go all the way over into northern China. Still a little south of Beijing, so not as northern as China gets, but northern-ish China. That’s moved us way back into the daytime side so now we have to come way back towards morning. Now that we’ve moved in the opposite direction, the Moon is much, much closer to Saturn. It’s not a right angle triangle just yet, not, not exactly. I think it is an oblique angle here that’s being formed, but it is closer to a right angle triangle. In fact, let’s hop a little bit further. I do want to keep this on land so that there is a real chance for people to see it rather than just boats. Looking from eastern Japan gives us pretty much a right angle triangle, I would say from the easternmost coast of Japan you would get a pretty much right angle triangle, better still on the far southern island of Japan, down towards the Ryukyuan Islands. Looking at this latitude, around the mid 30’s North, a large portion of the Earth here is deserted (as in covered in deserts), particularly from North Africa through the Middle East to Mongolia. Really these are considered several individual deserts and although it’s difficult to see on the Stellarium map, there are some green areas in the region, certain areas of the coasts and the coast of the Caspian Sea for example.

We are going to go a little bit further south, just around Central America or the North of South America, just around where the rainforested section of Africa transitions into the Sahel and Sahara further north. This is just around the bottom of India and the top of maritime Southeast Asia. This is still a little north of the equator, and we’ll start just inland from the Gulf of Guinea in Africa, around West Africa. We’re closer to the equator which should give us a better view on the morning of the 14th. Roughly the same shape of triangle that we’d be getting here in Ireland, but it’s getting much higher from the horizon. Mars, Saturn and the Moon are not only visible, but visible in a good level of darkness, without Mars being so low as to be mostly extincted by the atmosphere. Closer to the equator we’re already getting a much superior view, of course it will be a little bit different if we move longitude. We’ll move across to the top of South America. Again, this is going to put the Moon a little bit closer to Mars by the time they come up in the morning. They’re still rising nice and high above the east because we’re so close to the equator. We’re going to get the opposite effect if we go east. We’ll go all the way out to the Philippines and that will bring the Moon and Saturn closer together. Again there’s almost a right angle triangle between Saturn and the Moon, with Mars forming that lower corner.

Now we’re going to move south of the equator, last stop. I recently learned that a large number of capitals are roughly in the mid 30’s South as well. Canberra in Australia, Buenos Aires in Argentina, Montevideo in Uruguay and Santiago in Chile. Cape Town in South Africa is as well, but of course South Africa has multiple capitals and the other two are further north. By showing the view of the sky at this latitude, we’re going to cover a large number of people because capital cities of course have a large number of people. This is going to make things tilt or appear to tilt in the opposite direction to what we would see at roughly 35 degrees north. We still have Saturn, the Moon and Mars down in South Africa, and we’re not at a very different longitude from here in Ireland, just a very different latitude. As such, the Moon, Saturn and Mars form that nice, pretty even triangle. We’ll get the exact same effect with the ecliptic tilted to the north if we shift our perspective over to Australia. We end up a little north of Canberra, closer to Brisbane, but this is close enough. I say close enough because of course this isn’t really visible here in Ireland and it wouldn’t be visible from very far in the southern hemisphere, but there’s not that much land in the southern hemisphere that is as far south as we are far north. From Australia again the Moon is much closer to Saturn, but not as close to a right angle triangle as we were seeing from of Japan, and I’m not sure why. On the map it looks like we should be further east, but of course maps are a flat projection of what really is a spherical Earth, so things may be a little bit off.

In South America, somewhere between Buenos Aires and Santiago is close enough to the right place, there are several large cities around this area. Again we would expect the Moon to be closer to Mars on the 14th, and it is, just a little bit closer to Mars than it is to Saturn. This is the view that you would get from that longitude, so all across the Americas, north and south and central, you’re going to have the Moon a little bit closer to Mars. Way over in the Far East, whether you’re up in Japan or down in Australia, you’re going to have the Moon much much closer to Saturn. If you are at roughly Ireland’s longitude, but lucky enough to be at the right latitude, then you’re going to get closer to that even triangle shape.

I hope that some of you in other locations get or got a chance to see the triple conjunction, for those of you who like me do not have the correct viewing conditions, at least you know what it would look like thanks to the description here. I hope that you enjoyed this piece, if you did then please do like it. If you like this kind of content then please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. If you think others might like this content then please do share it with them. Most importantly, thank you very much for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.