My post on planetary conjunctions has gotten a lot of hits this month. If you haven’t noticed, there’s a gorgeous alignment of the planets Venus and Jupiter coming up next week. Plus, a very thin moon will hang nearby.
NASA published a webpage a couple of days ago outlining the event and describing it as the Sky Show of the Year. You should go there and read it. Pointing you to their webpage sure is an awful lot easier than coming up with one of my own. :o)
Clear Skies!
So I got to thinking… planetary alignments seem to be misunderstood by a vast majority of the population. It’s been a while since I wrote an actual original post about astronomy, so here’s some truth.
…
It is a common misconception that a planetary alignment is when three or more planets line up perfectly, either in line with the sun or not. There are a few factors involved in calculating the extreme rarity of such an event, but the main one is the fact that planetary orbits around the sun aren’t exactly planar. Here’s a diagram:
What you’re looking at is the view of the orbits edge-on. You might not can tell from this image, but the only one truly edge-on is the Earth’s, because I set the view for that. Everything else is in its proper place relative to an edge-on view of our path around the sun. Kind of a mess, huh? Let’s look a little closer…
Click on the image and get a better look.
Notice how the orbits of Jupiter and Venus aren’t even capable of lining up here. You can also make out the orbits of the other visible planets and see the separations between them. These orbits *do* line up in specific places, but those places are distinct points and it’s incredibly rare for those planets to actually line up three at a time. In fact, right now I couldn’t tell you if that has ever happened since Man has walked the Earth.
To make this post current, here’s the way the sky looked in the west around sundown in October…
Seriously, click on the image and get a better look.
You’ll notice I had Starry Night put in some nice mountains in the foreground. That’s to block the sun that is right behind the large peak. :o)
Without any orbital references, these three planets look like they’re very close to converging. They occupy a very small section of the sky and would, in fact, be considered in conjunction by the broad astronomical definition. But if you look more closely at the paths they are following you see the truth:
This is the exact same graphic as the previous one with only the relevant stuff shown. Notice that the orbits do cross each other and the possibility that two of them will line up from our perspective is actually just a matter of time, but all three do not line up at the same place from this vantage point. Having alignments of more than two planets and the Earth is just not going to happen — it is statistically nil. But there is a little more to this tale.
Scientists define ‘alignments’ and ‘conjunctions’ a little differently than everyday language. We consider an alignment to be any time two or more planets get within 15 degrees of each other. That’s a little more than the width of your fist at arm’s length. This means that astronomers can talk about conjunctions all the time. And that means they’re nothing special. Now, if you can get 3 or more planets within that 15-degree space, it can look quite pretty. And that’s pretty special. Getting all five naked-eye planets within that region is really awesome. And fairly rare. It happened just a few years ago, but it won’t be happening again for many, many years. (I quickly ran my planetarium software out for the next 50 years and didn’t see one happening. I found a close one in 2060, but it looks like a real one might not be until 2080. I’ll try to get an exact date and update this when I can.)
So what does this mean to you? Hopefully it gives you pause before thinking there is something cosmically special about a couple of solar system bodies moving about their daily motions. Though they are beautiful to witness, they have no influence over anything. Your life can only be affected emotionally. So that’s why I ridicule silly books like this. They are feeding you lies and using fear to line their pockets. Amazing what a little skepticism and independent thought can score for you.
To find out about the next planetary conjunction, I would recommend Astronomy magazine’s monthly feature, The Sky Show, written by my good friend, Martin Radcliffe. You’ll have to buy the magazine or else a subscription to the website, but the information therein can’t be beat!
[Hmmmmm, maybe I need to do another astronomy post on how to identify a planet if you don’t know what you’re looking at. Might be interesting, anyway.]
[For folks coming to this link looking for scientific information about planetary alignments, please go to this more recent article I wrote. Otherwise, enjoy this popular post about a silly book I found. And thanks for visiting!]
So my wife’s friend was throwing out a bunch of old books and I came across this:
I took this book with me to IPS. I told my wife I could get $20 within hours of getting there if I wanted to, but then I decided to just keep it for myself. I did get the opportunity to show it off to my friend Carolyn Petersen who said “What a find! What are you asking for it?” hehe. The inside cover gives the book the title “Prehistoric and the Genesis Truth (part I)” with a print date of 1976. Neat, huh? It’s exactly what you’d expect it to be. Some nut who thinks he found some Biblical code that explains the history of everything without us actually doing any research. Well, that’s not entirely true. He actually proposes some — I hate to say it — very interesting ideas concerning evolution and Biblical history. Let me explain…
The Stupid. This is printed right inside the cover (nothing has been changed… it really is this poorly written):
Front cover:
As the planets move into alignment at the end of 1982, their gravitational pull may cause huge storms on the sun. These storms could alter wind directions on earth, reducing the speed of the planet’s rotation, triggering serious earthquakes — Science quote.
“The picture on the front cover does not entirely pertain to the articles in this volume, but we use it to show the creation and handy work of God!” (Ps. 19:1) “But we do speak of this particular lineup in other prophetic books, that can be ordered concerning events!” — “This important book here, “contains the pre-historic and the Genesis truth, mysteries, revelation and various secrets of God’s cosmic force and creation!” [sic]
Okay, let’s start with the first paragraph. Wow, just wow. I want to go into all the bad things written in those two sentences, but I know you don’t have that kind of endurance. I’ll just hit the major ones. The planets did get in a fairly close alignment in 1982. I was 12 and I can remember all the doomsayers pushing books and interviews and other scary stuff off on us. I found the whole thing stupid at the time, but my classmates were really freaked out. Someone had calculated the exact moment of the alignment (as if that makes any sense) and on the day of we stopped class and watched the clock tick down our final seconds of existence. About 30 or 40 seconds after the end of time class resumed as normal. Later in life I learned that the computer monitor you’re reading this post on has more gravitational influence on you than all the other planets no matter where they are in their orbits.
But then it goes on to describe how solar storms actually mess with OUR weather! Not only that, but the destruction seems quite severe and very much like a real doomsday. This is justified because, of course, *science* said it. Or something. Not really sure what “science quote” means.
That second paragraph is just mind boggling. But it’s true, the book has absolutely nothing to do with the cover. With all the grammatical errors you can be assured this book was not an easy read. And read it I did. Almost as soon as I had it in my hands my curiosity overwhelmed me and I couldn’t put it down! And with all those exclamation points to let me know when I should be amazed!
The Interesting. The book is actually a transcript of a preacher’s sermon, complete and obviously unedited. In it he makes the claim that evolution is real, yet we were not a part of it. He claims, contrary to many of his contemporaries, that when science teaches about the age of the Earth and evolutionary processes we should accept it. Scientists have no ulterior motive in their publications and there’s nothing in the Bible to contradict them. Intrigued, aren’t you? heh. He goes on to explain that after the last mass extinction event the Earth was repopulated with creatures placed here by God, including us. This allows for Genesis to be true while not exactly refuting science. Okay, I know there’s a ton of things wrong with this view, but you have to admit from a religious standpoint it would seem logical if not downright reasonable compared to teaching the earth is 6000 years old!
The logic he uses is persuasive enough to actually be more dangerous than the doomsday claims of the planetary alignment. I can see myself as a teenager getting wrapped up in his argument and believing it. It would appeal to anyone who wishes to see a reconciliation between faith and science yet who doesn’t really understand either. Then again, the preacher was going on 1970’s theories and much has changed since then. That was when it was believed that the dinosaurs died out in an ice age. Don’t know if the incomplete scientific understanding of the time lends him any leniency, but I’m just sayin’. Enough of this… back to the astronomy!
The Truth. We see people so often persuaded into a position out of fear. [Why are you against free elections? Do you *want* the terrorists to win?] Sometimes fear is good [Grabbing the downed power line might make you dead.], but spreading fear irrationally is pure evil. The bottom line is you can’t think yourself out of a position you didn’t think yourself into. People who blindly believe that the planets influence their lives aren’t looking for truth, and they’re certainly not going to believe that scientists, much less someone like my ten-year-old, might understand better than they how the solar system works. They’re going to believe whomever they trust. And trust is something most skeptics have a hard time building with the common Joe.
Anywho, this has been my weak attack on the morons who claim planetary alignments have unpredictable results. Morons.
Infinitewell 