3 Planets Rising - Dec 10 pre-dawn

[Baak]

We're gonna try catching this even though it'll be just a few hours after we finish playing on Saturday.

Mercury (which is hard to see and probably many of you have never seen it in the sky) is really close in the sky to both Jupiter and Mars in the pre-dawn sky (40-45 minutes before dawn) in the USA.

http://skytonight.com/observing/ataglance


England may be a little harder as it's so much further north, so it'll be low on the horizon. In Australia it looks like it's pre-dawn on the 11th.

[Two Saks]

lol ...you beat me to it Baak, was going to post the same link

[Baak]

lol ...you beat me to it Baak, was going to post the same link

Ha!

I haven't seen Mercury since 2002. It's really something on a clear night/morning when it's bright - has a different look - somewhat "piercing" and intense.

Think I'm gonna have to drag me-self out of that inevitable Myth Hangover/Coma on Sunday morning to see it...

... and then mb chuck a few zeds before actually getting up!

[Frumius]

I saw an article on that earlier tonight, too. I might have to wake up to take a look as well. I don't think I've ever consciously seen Mercury at all.

But your post made me want to show a couple phrotos of stars and planets I've taken. Jupiter and Mars appear in one of them as well. The olive-colored type is the caption I have for them over at my site.


Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Pollux, Castor

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the five bright stars are from left to right the planets Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and the stars Pollux and Castor. We see them here looking through an opening in a lava tube in Lava Beds National Monument, Modoc County, California. The color in the sky is a hint of the aurora borealis as it faintly colored the night sky.
When I took this one, I didn't know which planets or stars made up the main formation you see. But I was going to Humboldt State University at the time, so I swung by the Astronomy department with a print of it and sat down w/ one of the professors and figured out which objects they had to be based upon the latitude and date, together with some of his star charts and stuff. You might miss Jupiter at this small image size, but it's the very short bright star trail on the far left that disappears into the lava tube's ceiling. It was about a half-hour exposure. I lit up the place by walking around and popping my flash here and there.



Lava Tube Borealis

I photographed Lava Tube Borealis in Lava Beds National Monument, California, in 1990. I was down in a lava tube late at night photographing the stars in motion through holes in the ceiling, here capturing the Big Dipper as it swung around the North Star. After the exposure was over (about a 30-minute exposure) I realized that the sky's color was beginning to change. It turned out I had captured the beginning of the aurora borealis, which is very rare at this latitude of about 41º N.
This was the first one I took that night, the second one being "Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Pollux, and Castor," upper photo. The Big Dipper is on the left part of the sky, and the North Star is nestled down at the bottom on the right hand side, just above the bushes along the rim of the lava tube opening. The aurora began as the shutter was open while I photographed this one. I used my flashlight to illuminate the foreground. That's part of an old dead tree that had fallen through the hole in the ceiling.

[Baak]

Very cool, Frum!


That's the thing about Mercury, it's very hard to see. Because it is so close to the Sun combined with the way it orbits, it is somewhat rare that it gets above the horizon far enough that the Sun is not there as well (which is why seeing it tends to be just before sunrise or just after sunset).

Also - like Venus - it is brightest when it is on the other side of the Sun from us, so the Sun is shining on its face and we can see the face.

The trick is, it can't be seen (with the naked eye) if it gets too close to the Sun, so there are only two "wedges" where we can see it brightly and then it has to be on the cycle of its orbit that puts it above the horizon, yadda yadda yadda...

In short, it's only visible when a certain combination of events come together properly.


I remember seeing it a few years ago and it was intensely bright very close to the horizon shortly after sunset. Didn't stay up long. Over the following several days it became progressively dimmer and dimmer very rapidly as it started heading out of being like a nearly full Moon, to a half Moon, to a crescent. It was neat because the first time I saw it, Mercury looked like a bright white little Christmas light, very different from Venus. And up here (at 7500') it was even more intense. Something I've wanted to see again for quite a while. It may not be "full" intensity tomorrow, but it'll be close.


This even tomorrow is somewhat spectacular (I heard it won't happen again for 47 years, but I haven't verified that) and if I had kiddies I'd get them out to see it too.

The fact that Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter will be so close together (and near a star I believe too) is something to see. Jupiter is massive compared to Mars or Mercury but is so much further away, yet I believe it will be the brightest of the three (in the lower left).


Ok - here's Jack Horkheimer's (aka "The Star Gazer") script that'll give you a bit more:

"Don't Miss This Weekend's Super Planet Meeting!
A Once In 50 Years Happening"

Horkheimer: Greetings, greetings fellow star gazers. And please be sure to mark this Sunday the 10th and Monday the 11th just before sunrise as the two days you'll see not only the best super planet meeting of the entire year but also the closest meeting of three naked eye planets until November 25th 2053. Wow!

O.K., we've got our skies set up for this Sunday December 10th, 45 minutes before sunrise facing east where you'll see three planets so close together that they could fit within a circle only one degree wide, which is easier to understand if you think of it this way, since a full Moon is only half a degree wide and these three planets would fit in a circle only two full Moon widths wide. And that is close! In fact, as I said we'll not see three naked eye planets this close together again for almost half a century, 47 years from now!

The brightest of the three will be the largest of the planets, 88,000 mile wide Jupiter. The second brightest will be the smallest planet since Pluto got its demotion, 3,000 mile wide Mercury. And although slightly larger but dimmer because it's much farther away than Mercury, 4,000 mile wide Mars. And believe me this is a sight you don't want to miss.

I strongly recommend that if you have a pair of binoculars that you use them because you'll be totally blown away. And if you have even the cheapest telescope you'll be blown even farther away. Now if you miss it because it's cloudy out on Sunday they'll still be almost as close the next day Monday December 11th although in just that short a time Mercury will have moved from being slightly above Jupiter to just slightly below it.
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Now as I reminded you last week even though they will appear super close it is only an optical illusion because in reality all these planets are incredibly far away from each other. It's only our line of sight from our Earth that makes them appear so incredibly close. In fact Mercury will be 120 million miles away this Sunday, Mars 230 million miles away but Jupiter will be a whopping 600 million miles from Earth. Once again Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And remember if you miss this, you won't see another until Nov. 25th, 2053!

Keep looking up!

And for the truly interested: the star that the three planets are next to, Beta Scorpii, is 530 light years away (which is actually quite close as stars go).

How far away is 530 light years? Here goes:

Light travels 186,000 miles per second (that's roughly 7 1/2 times around the Earth in one second). Imagine traveling that fast for an entire year (24 hours a day, 7 days a week). In a year you would have traveled just under 6 trillion miles - a trillion being a million million:

In one year = 5,878,499,814,186 miles

Since this star is 530 light years away, that means you need to multiply all that distance travelled in one year by 530:

In 530 years = 3,115,604,901,518,580 miles

Jupiter is roughly 600,000,000 miles away, so Beta Scorpii is roughly 5 million times further away than that.

Heh.

And that's close for a star! Heck, it's right next door! The Milky Way Galaxy (the edge of one arm is what you see edge-on across the sky on a really clear night or in the mountains) is roughly 100,000 light years across and contains roughly 100,000,000,000 stars!

And we're in one galaxy of some 350,000,000,000 we can see - and there are likely to be many times more beyond that!

LOL!!

Check this zoom-in/zoom-out site for more - it's great stuff:
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html

[Baak]

Well, after hitting the sack around 2 (after another excellent Match) I managed to pull myself out of a warm bed at 6 and drag myself outside, warmed up the car and headed over to check this out.

It was pretty dang cold!

Overall I would say this particular display is more for astronomy buffs than the general public - it wasn't as bright a display as I was expecting. For example, I couldn't see Mars without our binoculars and Mercury wasn't as bright as I've seen it before. Still it was neat.

Also, I was there 40 minutes before sunrise but I think it would have been better to be there 60 minutes (or more) before sunrise to catch the planets with a black (or blacker) sky. It all depends on how much is "in the way" on your horizon.

For the next couple of days you'll still be able to see this display, they just won't be "as close together".

So my recommendation is: if you really want to check it out, try again either tomorrow (Mon) or Tue morning 60 minutes before sunrise and take your binoculars.


Extra:

I just looked at the setup in more detail and the three planets can be seen all week like this. Mercury starts "dropping" back towards the horizon, which means it will get progressively harder to see as the time gap between seeing it come up and the sun rising will get smaller and smaller. BUT, Mercury will also get a little brighter as each day passes, so there's a nice trade-off.

And on the 18th there is a super-thin crescent Moon (it must be just before the New Moon) in the general vicinity - in fact, it may or may not even be visible it's that thin.

[Two Saks]

I managed to pull myself out of a warm bed at 6 and drag myself outside, warmed up the car and headed over to check this out.

Impressive . You should get some kind of astronomy purple heart. I actually set the alarm (radio station not too rude) and slept through it. Nice job!