All four easily seen planets have reached peak or near-peak brilliance at once. And they’re doing it at our convenience, meaning the first few hours after nightfall. It’s a dinnertime special, and it requires no equipment, charts, or sky knowledge. It merely demands we ignore the odd chorus of web, TV and print advice, in which the media is mostly calling this a “line up of planets.”
Beep! Wrong! There’s no line anywhere. In fact, two of the planets are in one side of the sky, (in the west after sunset) with the other two in the opposite direction. And these, rising in the east, are nowhere near each other. Sounds like a scattered mess. But trust me, you’ll find all four in under a minute, and will go back inside having observed the best planet display in years.
If you’re reading this when this paper hits the stands, on Thursday, January 16, simply go outdoors between 6 and 6:30 in the evening and look in the direction the sun set. There in the west is a super-brilliant “star” that outshines everything else in the sky. It’s so eye-catching, it’s a tough call whether you can claim to have found Venus or whether that planet found you, by instantly grabbing your attention. Either way, there’s our nearest planetary neighbor, which is at its very best this month and all through February as well.
On Thursday, a much less bright star closely hovers next to Venus, on its left side. That’s Saturn. From Friday through the weekend, Saturn will hang a little below Venus while still on its left side. Starting Monday we’ll say Saturn is closely below Venus. Still as easy as burning the toast. Saturn is in the news because its rings are now edgewise to Earth, which happens every 15 years. So if you have a telescope, Venus won’t look special, but Saturn will appear as if there’s a straight line through it. Whether Saturn without rings is something special or merely disappointing is up to you. But remembering that we won’t see this again until 2039 certainly makes it unusual.
Now swivel your head like that girl in the Exorcist and look the opposite way, toward the east. You’ll be hit with a blast of bright stars, mostly low in the sky. Our quarry is of course the two remaining bright planets, so though that wall of brightness will keep getting higher and will move rightward until it dominates the midnight southern sky as a worthy sight, let’s keep viewing now, using our 6:30 evening vantage. The brightest of all these stars is the planet Jupiter, and it’s very nearly the highest one. Simply brilliant. Then look much lower. Unless trees or houses are blocking it, Mars is that very bright orange “star” that’s the lowest left of them all. Confirm your sighting by looking just above it, where you should see a much less brilliant star which is Pollux, one of the Gemini twins.
And there, you’re done. All four bright planets, three of them arriving at their brightest and closest to us, all in the same month and time of night. And clouds can’t ruin it, because the spectacle goes on and on, night after night.
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