THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX
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PLANETS TO GATHER IN THE EVENING SKIES
(July 23, 2008) – Of the eight major planets five are bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. Since they are that bright, they were known to the ancients and astronomers refer to them – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – as the “classical” planets. Because of their various orbits, it is a bit unusual to have all five of these planets in the sky at the same time. But, as Astronomers at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute point out, we do have such an opportunity coming up in August.
Let’s start with the brightest – Venus. The queen of the planets passed behind the Sun on June 9 and is now emerging from the evening twilight. Low in the west at sunset it is the easiest to spot simply because it is the brightest object in the nighttime sky after the Moon. On the evening of August 2, look for Venus to the right of a waxing crescent moon. The red planet Mars can be found with some difficulty to the upper left with the much fainter Saturn about halfway between. By the next evening the Moon will have moved upward past Saturn and will lie directly below Mars.
Now fast forward about a week. On August 10 Venus has moved eastward towards Saturn and Mercury has emerged from the twilight and is chasing this pair. Mars is still up to the left of this grouping but the waxing now-gibbous moon is over in the south just above the red star Antares that forms the heart of the scorpion. The fifth of the classical planets is bright “star” to the east of the moon among the stars of Sagittarius.
On August 13 Venus passes just south of Saturn and two nights later Mercury passes the ringed planet. Saturn then disappears into the sunset. On August 22 Mercury passes the slower moving Venus and by September 7 they have both basically caught up with Mars and the three planets form a neat triangle in Virgo. Venus will rise higher in the evening skies all fall and become our “evening star.” Mercury and Mars will both sink into the twilight by late September.
About PARI
PARI is a not-for-profit foundation established in 1998. Located in the Pisgah Forest southwest of Asheville, NC, PARI offers educational programs at all levels, from K-12 through post-graduate research. The institute is affiliated with the 16-campus University of North Carolina system through PARSEC, a UNC Center hosted at PARI, and is a member of the NC Grassroots Museum Collaborative. For more information about PARI and its programs, visit www.pari.edu.