7:15 AM | *A celestial event worth viewing next few early mornings*
Paul Dorian
Planets in alignment throughout April around the world. Image credit: SOU, australiangeographic.com.au
Overview
The month of April is ending with a celestial event worth viewing involving the planets of Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. These planets are now lined up and can be viewed at sunrise in the eastern sky. In addition, Venus and Jupiter are “converging” and will meet in conjunction on Saturday morning, April 30th. Looking ahead, these four planets will remain in their cosmic line until early July and other planets will actually join in on the parade.
Sky map for Thursday morning, April 28th (courtesy spaceweather.com)
Details
This is a great week to wake up early and look at the eastern sky for an alignment of Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. The best time to view the planets is about 60 minutes before local sunrise assuming, of course, that sky conditions are favorable. While this celestial event will be plenty worthwhile to view on Thursday and Friday mornings, it will get even better for early Saturday morning. Venus and Jupiter are converging for a tight conjunction on Saturday morning, April 30th, and will appear to nearly collide to observers on Earth. Due to the glare from both planets, they will appear to many to be one very bright object in the eastern sky.
Sky map for Friday morning, April 29th (courtesy spaceweather.com)
Venus’s orbit is closer to the Sun than the Earth’s, and Jupiter’s orbit is much farther away, so the proximity is an illusion, occurring only because Earth, Venus, and Jupiter happen to be approximately aligned. This celestial event will continue the morning of May 1 (Sunday), but the positions of the two planets will be reversed. As far as the weather is concerned, the bad news is that temperatures will be considerably colder-than-normal in the Mid-Atlantic region for the next few mornings, but the good news is that there should be clear-to-partly cloudy skies for much of the time.
Sky map for Saturday morning, April 30th (courtesy spaceweather.com)
Looking ahead, the four planets will remain in their cosmic line until early July. Mercury will appear in the line as early as June 10 in places with a flat, eastern horizon leading to a five-planet alignment with the best viewing conditions in the latter part of the month. Uranus and Neptune will also be in the field of view in the Northern Hemisphere during the alignment. Uranus will be between Mercury and Mars and will be visible in areas without much light pollution. It might be possible to see it with the naked eye in a dark sky, but binoculars will aid in observing it…Neptune will require a telescope to view.
Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Arcfield
arcfieldweather.com
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