[HN Gopher] Five planets are lining up in the sky in June and wi...
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Five planets are lining up in the sky in June and will peak tonight
Author : gmays
Score : 179 points
Date : 2022-06-24 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
| mutagen wrote:
| I got up early this morning to take a look and try to get photos.
| Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were spectacular and quite
| visible. I never did see Mercury, we had high humidity after rain
| last night and maybe that combined with the brightening dawn made
| it difficult.
|
| Photographing these was a challenge. My widest non fisheye lens
| (18mm on APS-C sensor) just doesn't capture more than a couple of
| planets and the moon at a time. Saturn is way off high in the sky
| to the south while Venus, the Moon, and Mars are all to the east.
| I snapped off a panorama sequence but Lightroom wasn't able to
| automatically combine them so I'm going to be manually picking
| out control points in Hugin to try to get most or all of these
| into one image. I should have tried at least a couple of shots
| with the fisheye but I don't have much experience with that and
| was a little sleepy.
| Melatonic wrote:
| You could also try PTGUI for stitching
| tehsauce wrote:
| mercury is quite close to the sun which makes it hard to see
| sometimes as it's only ever visible for a short time very close
| to the horizon at twilight
| Sharlin wrote:
| Sucks that this happens in the Northern summer and I live at
| 60degN... It's totally impossible to see this lineup from here as
| the planets rise essentially at the same time as the sun. Besides
| even at midnight the sky wouldn't get dark enough to see anything
| except maybe Venus and Jupiter! Comet Neowise in 2020 was equally
| impossible to spot from here, frustratingly.
| hoten wrote:
| Tonight, or this morning? Too late?
| johnmaguire wrote:
| The article says the peak was this morning (June 24, 45 minutes
| before sunrise.)
| stvnbn wrote:
| Can I see them tomorrow? o.O
| chongli wrote:
| I've gone out to see the planets a couple of times this week.
| What's most amazing for me is that this alignment of planets
| makes it easy to visualize the plane of the ecliptic [1].
| Ordinarily, when we look up at the night sky we see stars and
| planets seemingly scattered about at random. Now seeing all the
| planets along an arc helped me recall and visualize this plane
| extending out from the sun which all of the planets travel along.
| We might then imagine looking down on the solar system from above
| and seeing all the planets in their orbital paths.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic
| ahmadmijot wrote:
| There are a lot of interesting phenomena for stargazer in our
| lifetime but I can't see lots of them so far because: 1. Cloudy
| skies 2. Rainy days 3. Light pollutions
| noipv4 wrote:
| I saw Mars and Jupiter up close with some cheap Celestron
| Binoculars on a tripod. Could see 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter
| lined up nicely like tiny white dots.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| I lived for a year in a university apartment for faculty with
| my father, who was a prof. At the top of the residence building
| was an observatory with a 10" telescope, now upgraded to 16".
|
| As a kid living there I was often hanging around the building
| and if the telescope was being operated, sometimes they would
| let you look, or pick out fun targets to look at. I'll never
| forget the first times seeing Saturn and Jupiter.
|
| https://www.brandonu.ca/observatory/gallery/
| trhway wrote:
| When I looked first time through telescope at the brightest
| "star" and saw another 4 smaller "stars" perfectly aligned with
| it I had a "WTF wrong with this Universe?" moment before
| realizing it was Jupiter :)
| em-bee wrote:
| i discovered this by chance some time last year. being in a
| city those were the only things visible besides a few other
| stars, so that line spreading over half the sky really stood
| out. it was only 3 visible planets and the moon, although
| pluto was in there too, just not bright enough.
|
| obviously not as impressive as the current view, but although
| i had an interest in watching stars already a few decades
| earlier it was the first time i noticed that this was
| happening, and it made me feel much closer to our solar
| system.
|
| i was looking up there and thought: wow, this is my
| neighboorhood. this is home.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Pretty much what Galileo and those that came first probably
| thought too.
| seneca wrote:
| This peaked this morning, not tonight.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Yep. I got up early and was able to see 4/5, due to some cloud
| cover. I really need to invest in a good camera and telescope.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Well you've got til 2040 to get around to it before next time
| :)
| dehrmann wrote:
| It seems like there's are a handful of incredible, once-in-
| a-decade, astronomical events to look at every year.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Depending on weather, this morning might have been "the
| best", but it was only marginally better than the
| surrounding several days/weeks.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| which timezone? :)
| lisper wrote:
| UTC :-)
| TheBlerch wrote:
| Anyone know if they'll still be visible from the E Coast tomorrow
| (Saturday) 45 min before sunrise (which was the optimal time this
| morning?
| 37 wrote:
| The planets will all still be fairly well aligned, but the moon
| will be a bit off (since it's the closest, it moves through the
| sky the fastest).
|
| I used Stellarium to find this out, great program.
|
| http://stellarium.org/
|
| Also worth noting that the planets are in order; first Mercury,
| then Venus, etc etc
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Is there any way to get alerts on your phone of these events
| before they happen? It always seem like by the time they make the
| press and get disseminated on sites like HN it is too late. Was
| very frustrated by the solar eclipse a while back because by the
| time the mainstream press picked up on it, glasses were sold out
| everywhere. There is too much going on to have to manually
| research and systematically keep track of every topic of
| interest. Isn't that the point of the News, and sites like
| Reddit/HN?
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Unlike the eclipse this one will last a few days. Then the
| planets will slowly drift apart but for the next couple of
| mornings it will be noticeable.
| botdan wrote:
| NASA puts out a new video called "What's up" at the start of
| every month with all the interesting, predicted events for
| stargazing. They post them to both Twitter [0] and YouTube [1]
| as well as on their Skywatching page [2], the latter of which
| is a great resource with daily guides. It's a fun start-of-the-
| month ritual for me to check out the latest events and add them
| to my personal calendar.
|
| For actual notifications, most stargazing apps probably have
| some sort of news feed or notification system. I can't
| recommend a specific one but a quick Google search tells me
| Star Walk 2 [3] seems to support push notifications
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1532030924489039877 [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpgiZJm7szg [2]
| https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/skywatching/home/ [3]
| https://starwalk.space/en/tutorials/how-can-i-get-notified-a...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I use an iPhone app called "Sky Guide". It sends me
| notifications of interesting events, and the app itself has a
| "Calendar" page with a list of everything upcoming.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sky-guide/id576588894
|
| Separately, if you are a New York Times subscriber, you can
| also subscribe to their Space and Astronomy Events calendar
| feed:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/science/astronomy-s...
| cpeterso wrote:
| I also recommend an iPhone app called "ISS Finder". It will
| notify you when the International Space Station will be
| making a visible flyby over you. You can then run outside and
| watch the ISS glide across the night sky at 17,000 mph. It
| takes about one minute to cross the sky. I always feel awe
| seeing that ISS dot, knowing humans can launch other humans
| into orbit 250 miles above.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Yes, always a fun sight. Sky Guide has ISS notifications as
| well.
| nvahalik wrote:
| Just want to encourage anyone with kids...
|
| I woke my son up this morning and we went outside and looked at
| these. We didn't stay outside very long (maybe 5 minutes). But
| walking him back inside he stopped and said "thanks for waking me
| up to see this. I really liked it". Then we both went back to
| sleep.
|
| It may seem trivial but these are great moments to share with
| your kids/spouse/SO--there is so much in our lives that we can't
| see or touch nowadays and it is really meaningful to be able to
| point up in the sky (even without binocs/assistance) and "see"
| these planets we talk about but only usually see in pictures.
|
| It can be a real spiritual experience.
| dvtrn wrote:
| It's been a rough day. This made me smile. Thank you.
| nvahalik wrote:
| It's too easy to look over this stuff sometimes.
|
| As a parent, I don't always make the right choices. I can
| beat myself up, but sometimes you just need to point them to
| something amazing and just let them experience the wonder of
| it all. It definitely feels like a "reset" to the
| relationship... even if only for a day.
| bilekas wrote:
| This is the kind of parenting advice I can get behind.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Plus you never know your potential whereabouts in eighteen
| years from now, so it's always good to leave behind little
| seeds of wonder, as small as mustard seeds in the sky before
| dawn.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| +1 from someone with a fond memory of watching the perseids
| with my Dad as a kid. Wasn't keen to be woken at 3am, but it
| was worth it.
| 37 wrote:
| It's also worth noting that the planets were all in order as
| well.... Mercury, Venus, etc etc
| fransr wrote:
| I agree. I woke my daughter up to see NEOWISE when she was six.
| We climbed a small hill at 2 am to try get a glimpse of it. It
| was very close to the horizon so we had trees in the way.
|
| We took the car up to a higher point but it got too cloudy so
| we went back home to sleep.
|
| Even though we never saw the comet she still remembers that
| time as something exciting and joyful and she often brings it
| up when we talk about space.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| I have a comet chasing memory with my father. We never saw
| it, drove around two different nights, and had a great time.
| Won't forget being up at 3 or 4 am in a little agricultural
| town pulling over every few minutes to take a look.
| heywire wrote:
| My kids (now 15 and 11) still talk about the time we laid out
| back in the yard and watched the meteor showers in the middle
| of the night. It's a top memory for all of us :)
| nvahalik wrote:
| This is awesome!
|
| My daughter and I stayed out on the trampoline one night and
| played a game to see who could see the first star. She won--
| and spotted Regulus. It was another one of those beautiful
| moments. Probably the stillest she's ever been for 15+
| minutes...
| c0nsumer wrote:
| Good on you.
|
| I distinctly remember my dad waking me up to look at lightning
| storms or other similar events.
|
| This stuff is important.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| My parents are not scientists, and my mother is probably even
| science skeptical, but two of my strongest, earliest memories
| were going to the beach to watch a meteor shower. It was
| magical - I give no qualifications.
|
| I am thankful for this experience often, especially when I see
| these sorts of discussions. Way to be.
| rpmisms wrote:
| You can think the earth is flat and still enjoy a meteor
| shower. They're so beautiful, and obviously speak deeply to
| us as primates or something, because we have so much imagery
| involving meteors.
| mrtri wrote:
| porkbrain wrote:
| Some time ago I learnt that such an event was called a _syzygy_.
| What a pleasant sound!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syzygy_(astronomy)
| krylon wrote:
| Coincidentally (yeah, that is what _They_ (tm) want you to
| believe...), that is also the title of a really fun and strange
| episode of the X-Files. One of my favorites.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| "Hate him."
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have been looking for a (relatively) inexpensive
| binoculars/tripod setup so when I am out of town and in the
| boonies, I can enjoy the stars. For everything I look at, though,
| there's a caveat -- bad collimation, poor eye relief, etc. If it
| isn't one thing, it's another.
| dmead wrote:
| since the pandemic I've been learning astrophotography.
|
| https://www.instagram.com/mead_observatory/
|
| sorry for the Instagram link.
|
| it's exciting to see planet season is starting up. hopefully i'll
| actually produce something decent looking this year.
| songzme wrote:
| I recently got interested in looking at the planets and
| constellations and I want to suggest these to anyone who is
| interested:
|
| This book introduced me to how the earth moves and how to find
| any constellations in the sky: https://www.amazon.com/Stars-New-
| Way-See-Them/dp/0544763440/
|
| My area has pretty bad light pollution and so having this
| binoculars really helps to see the hard to see stars (The wide
| angles helps you see several stars at once so I prefer it to the
| telescopes): https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B084R99W8Q/
| thingification wrote:
| A surprising experience to me was seeing Saturn through a
| telescope. Despite working on PhD in physics at the time and
| being a lab demonstrator for an undergraduate astronomy course, I
| looked at it and thought "shit, it's real!"
|
| Though it was a nice enthusiast-level telescope, I think it was
| just seeing the rings that did it. So I reckon a cheaper one
| would have had the same effect.
| svachalek wrote:
| There's something about seeing a dot in the sky turn into a
| real picture that just hits you somewhere very primal, I know
| exactly the feeling although it's hard to explain. It's exactly
| what you expected to see except blurrier, but it's still like a
| punch to the gut. Jupiter and its moons are similar, easily
| seen with a little magnification.
|
| I find that if I sit with it a little bit, I can actually feel
| the reality of the situation, that I'm in fact looking at an
| object in front of me that's very very far away but bigger than
| my entire planet. If that perspective sinks in it really just
| blows your mind. Maybe similar (though surely lesser) to what
| astronauts feel when they see the earth as a sphere.
| sophacles wrote:
| I too had that reaction the first time I saw it through a
| telescope. I think some part of me put Saturn pictures in the
| same category as movies - pretty but not 'real'. When i saw the
| rings floating there it was pretty mind blowing.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| You can see the rings with a small, cheap telescope but they
| will be a fuzzy blob. Good glass of large diameter is not cheap
| but it makes a huge difference in the experience. A Dobsonian
| scope is an excellent choice for good planet viewing at a
| reasonable price. Dobbies have a good, big mirror with no
| unnecessary nonsense tacked on.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dqwun9mqiSo
| Tor3 wrote:
| I was fortunate and managed to see all five at a similar occasion
| many decades ago. My image-stabilized binoculars helped a lot in
| finding Mercury in the glowing sky near the sun. It helped that I
| was on a work mission to a remote area with just the clear
| uninterrupted sky.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| nah they peaked in high school
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| Does anyone know if the phenomenon is still observable tonight?
| The article discussed June 24 sunrise (this morning), but
| mentions ongoing activity all month.
| em-bee wrote:
| the planets don't move that fast. it won't stay a perfect line,
| but weather permitting it should be observable for a few weeks.
| mercury should be the first to disappear, since it moves the
| fastest.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Every night they will be in slightly different locations.
|
| The moon moves several degrees in its position in the sky every
| night and rises later each night. Something like an hour or
| possibly more. So that's 15 degrees per hour difference. It's
| been a long time since I've looked at the exact numbers, but
| those rough numbers gets me close when planning. I use this
| from time to time when shooting full moon shots. If I shoot the
| day after the full moon, the moon rises later which means its a
| bit darker after sunset and not noticeably less full for
| creative purposes. However, whatever the moon is rising behind
| will look different. Cityscapes will have the building lights
| lit and much more obvious nighttime look where day of full moon
| tends to happen closer to sunset so you have that twighlight
| look instead.
|
| The planets, being further away, move much less in their
| positions, but they definitely will be in different
| arrangements. So if on one day they are more or less in a line,
| the next day they might be more triangular shaped.
| fuzzybassoon wrote:
| Yes, it should still be! The motion of the planets in the sky
| is relatively small day-over-day.
|
| A good way to verify yourself would be to use a tool like
| Stellarium Web [1] and set your location and set the time to
| tonight at say, 3am (the planets become more visible as you get
| nearer to dawn tomorrow). You could even change the time from
| say 6/25 at 3am to 6/24 at 3am to see just how much / little it
| changes night-over-night.
|
| [1] https://stellarium-web.org/
| sva_ wrote:
| That's a very nice app. Thanks for that. Seems like the sun
| is already getting up when the constellation happens from
| where I live, sadly. Not sure if I'll be able to see Mercury.
| bilekas wrote:
| Hate to complain but absolutely bombarded by popups on that
| link.. Auto play videos, adblocker warnings. My god can't we just
| read a cool article without getting hassled for appreciating the
| content.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Don't feel bad about complaining, just improve your life:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
| johnmaguire wrote:
| While we're at it, as a long time uBlock fan, this recently
| changed my life (block in-video ads on YouTube):
| https://sponsor.ajay.app/
| bilekas wrote:
| you guys are doing gods work ! Thanks!
| digisign wrote:
| Also over twenty javascript includes on that thing. Thankful
| for no-script.
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