Will a “rare” alignment of planets be visible to the naked eye in the night sky on June 3?

One of the things I've enjoyed in my more than 22 years writing the Night Sky column for Space.com is alerting readers to celestial hoaxes or falsehoods circulating widely on the Internet.

While I have done my best to steer readers away from such fallacies, it still surprises me how many people take them as fact. In recent years, some of these claims that have been widely spread online have turned out to be quite far-fetched. So much so that one would think that very few, if any, in our modern, technological 21st century world would be fooled.

But in reality (and I guess because most people these days fall for the mantra that “if it's on social media it must be true”), a surprisingly large number of people end up fooled and take these promotions at face value. foot of the letter.

And then, unfortunately, they circulate them widely among family and friends.

Related: What equipment do you need to see and photograph the planets?

Previous celestial farces

The most famous, of course, was the annual “The Mars Hoax“, which for about a decade reared its ugly head every August. Since the Red Planet's historically close approach to Earth occurred in August 2003, a spurious story circulated online in the following years, implying that on one night In late August, Mars would appear in the sky the same size as the full moon. Totally false, of course, but every year there were countless people who actually believed this was going to happen!

Then in 2015, a widely shared story on the web claimed that January 4, 2015 was “zero gravity day“, a date when humans on Earth could supposedly experience weightlessness if they jumped into the air at a certain time. You have to wonder how many people around the world actually tried to float that day.

And later that same year, a fake news site reported that the Earth it would darken on November 15, 2015, just before 3 a.m. and then the eerie darkness would finally disappear on November 30, at 4:45 p.m.

Here we go again

Every time such crazy stories appear on the Internet, I get questions from people who want clarification (“Is this true?”), or, in the case of the Mars Hoax, questions like: “What is the best place and time to do this?” Can you see this?”

To that end, I'm having a feeling of déjà vu, because in recent days an increasing number of people have been messaging me about a supposed “freak event” supposedly known as “Parade of planets” which will be visible before dawn on June 3.

Supporting this claim is a graphic that has been widely circulated, particularly on Facebook, where it has been accompanied by comments such as:

“That sounds exciting!”
“This is something I've been looking forward to.”
“There have been quite a few astral phenomena lately,” and
“One more chance to see something extraordinary.”

Those last two comments undoubtedly refer to the recent solar eclipse and northern lights display.

And now many are under the impression that another spectacular celestial event is coming up on the first Monday in June.

Except it's not.

Unknown creator

First, let's examine the ersatz graph in question. There is no reference to who designed it, it is simply “out there” for everyone to see. It shows six planets placed along a diagonal line extending upward from the horizon of a tree silhouette (no direction indicated). And all the planets are shown as we would see them through a telescope.

Unfortunately, there is a certain percentage of the population that is not aware that you simply cannot see the planets with the naked eye as disks (for proof, let's return to the Mars hoax)… nor The famous rings of Saturn for that matter. With just your eyes, the brightest planets appear simply as stars that rarely blink.

So people who plan to get up early and go out on June 3 expecting to see Jupiter's swollen disk or Saturn's rings at a glance will be, to say the least, quite disappointed.

Where are they?

And spotting some of these planets will in itself be problematic.

Mercury and Jupiter For example, it will be very close to the sun's position in the sky and will therefore likely be masked by the bright glow of morning twilight. Perhaps binoculars will give you a glimpse of these two worlds, but in addition to trying to see them against the early light of dawn, they will also be extremely low on the east-northeast horizon; both will get up only half an hour before dawn.

So unless you have a nice, flat horizon with no obstructions (like distant buildings or trees), you can probably forget about spotting the smallest planet in the solar system (Mercury) next to the largest planet (Jupiter).

then comes Uranus, which is visible to the naked eye, but only under very dark skies and without light pollution; in fact, it is close to the threshold of visibility for most people without using any optical aids. Of course, to see such a faint object, you'll need to know exactly where it is in the sky; A good star map will certainly help. But all of this is really just a moot point on June 3, since Uranus will rise only about an hour before sunrise, when the morning twilight will be well underway. So, like Mercury and Jupiter, there is no real chance of seeing Uranus either.

Curiously, whoever created this misleading sky chart left out the most obvious of all celestial views: Moon. On Monday morning, June 3, early risers will see a beautiful waning crescent Moon hanging low in the eastern sky. And around 4am local daylight time, about half a dozen degrees to your right there will be a relatively bright orange light; that will be Mars. At last! A planet that is clearly visible without the aid of binoculars or a telescope.

Next comes the planet furthest from the Sun, Neptune, which is too faint to be seen with the naked eye and lies at an average distance from the Sun of 2.8 billion miles. It is more than six times dimmer than Uranus. Therefore, there is no chance of seeing that planet either, unless you have access to a dark sky, a star map and at least a good pair of binoculars or a telescope.

Finally, there is Saturn, rising in the east-southeast around 2 am. But the best view comes when the eastern sky begins to lighten, when Saturn hangs quite high in the southeast. Again, the rings are invisible unless you use a telescope; To the naked eye, Saturn appears as a relatively bright light that shines with a yellowish-white tint.

So if you head out around 3:30 or 4am on a Monday morning, don't expect to be blown away by seeing a planetary parade. What you will likely see is a crescent moon and a bright orange “star” shining to your right (Mars) and further to the right will be another relatively bright “star” shining a yellowish white hue (Saturn).

It's not “weird” at all!

This does not mean that the planets will not be aligned. While you won't be able to see four of them visually (Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune), they will all still be out there and, in fact, positioned along a straight line in space.

This is because all the planets orbit the sun along more or less the same orbital plane. From here on Earth, that orbital plane is known as the ecliptic and all the planets appear to travel along it. And it's not particularly unusual to see multiple planets aligned along the ecliptic from our cosmic perspective here on Earth.

Wait until next winter.

And if you want to see a truly eye-catching alignment of planets (four bright planets plus a beautiful crescent moon thrown in as a bonus, all in one glance), next winter, be sure to check the early afternoon sky. shortly after 6 pm on January 31, 2025 and/or February 1.

On that first night, you will be able to see the moon sitting at the bottom right of Saturn and on the next night the moon will have moved to the bottom left of Saturn. Venus. Meanwhile, high in the southeast, Jupiter will shine a brilliant silvery light among the stars of Taurus the Bull, accompanied by the beautiful open star clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades.

And finally, high in the eastern sky, and forming a striking triangle with the bright stars Pollux and Castor of GeminiThe Twins will be amber Mars and will appear more than six times brighter than it appears to us now.

Compared to all that, the much-hyped June 3 “Parade of Planets” can best be described in one word: disappointing.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York University. Hayden Planetarium. Write about astronomy during natural history magazinehe Farmers' Almanac and other publications.