Waking Ideas

The night sky has always fascinated me. Millions upon millions of celestial objects always at the ready to enjoy, be awed by, and to fill with fascination. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to finally understand the universe and get a sense of its scope.

It is sort of like being on vacation in a new place. A few years ago Eliza and I began vacationing in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. We used a map, or our iPhones, to find our way to the rental house. Whenever we wanted to leave the house to buy some groceries, browse the local shoppes, or find a remote beach to go snorkeling – we needed to use a map. Emerald Isle is perhaps an average of a few hundred yards in width and stretches on for about 10-20 miles. It isn’t all that hard to navigate in such a place. Still, it took us a few years of visiting this same area to truly get a lay of the land and begin to navigate without the aid of a compass.

(Ok, so I don’t have a compass.)

This is what it has been like for me with Space. It is always there – directly above my head – but it has taken me years to get a lay of the land and begin to understand the dynamics, the voids, the bodies, the expanse, and the relative position of these huge objects that seem so small when looking at the night’s sky.

During a somewhat recent trip to a local Observatory I remember the first time that I realized that, during Spring, the first object that you see on the horizon was not a star. It is Mercury. “You mean, we’re looking at a planet right now?” I remember saying. Mercury, though small, hardly distinguishable as anything other than a small star, and quickly fading due to the Sun’s rays being redirected to the far side of Earth – was beautiful. It was on that day that I began to crave more information about the night sky.

Celestial events are a strange phenomenon to grasp. Nearly every night, to those educated enough to know, the night sky is filled with interesting events taking place. The moon’s cycle, a shadow being cast on a nebula enough to see it more clearly for the first time, moons of distant planets getting in-between the Earth and the planet to get a good glimpse of them, and even much more dramatic events like supernova – are happening all the time. Every night. Even during the day. However, there are also “once in a lifetime”-type events. Comets, meteor showers, and eclipses may be the most common and familiar of celestial events that we’ve all heard about from time-to-time during our short lives here on Earth. But if you went outside on Thanksgiving, you may have noticed a celestial event in preparation. Sort of like the preparation for a party. The invitations go out, people are gathered, and the party begins. Jupiter, Venus, and Earth’s Moon recently held such a gathering – and I hope you were eavesdropping when they did.

The party was really held on Monday and Tuesday night. Yes, planets and moons party pretty hard. But that is but a blink of the eye in Outer Space (echo, echo, echo). These three celestial objects, from our perspective here at on Earth, came very close together in our night’s sky. As Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine put it – these objects would be about 2-degrees apart or about a finger width held at arm’s length. In other words, they’d appear to be pretty close to one another. Closer than you may ever see them again in your lifetime.

The Moon, on average, is about 238,000 miles from Earth. I say on average because this distance changes slightly. You know, with the tide. Jupiter and Venus are, well, millions and millions of miles away from Earth. Like, hundreds of millions of miles.

So how are these guys having a party? Why do they look like they are so close together? It is all about perspective. Something that is tough to learn about the night sky, but, once you get it down you’ll really enjoy it – is how these heavenly bodies are positioned relative to each other. Think of it this way. You and three of your friends are standing in a large field. You are standing facing your friends who are all facing you, in a line, shoulder to shoulder – yet at least 30 feet between them. They are not close. You can tell this because they are all the same distance from you, but they are standing far apart. Now you tell one of your friends to walk closer to the friend in the middle, but at the same time, to walk farther away from you. This friend, the one on the right, is slightly larger than your friend in the middle. He walks a few paces further away from you and gets closer to your friend. You tell the friend on the left to come a little closer yet also to get closer to the friend in the middle.

Now you are seeing the Moon (your friend on the left), seemingly closer Venus (your friend in the middle), who is also fairly close to Jupiter (your friend on the right). Yet because you changed their distance from you, you didn’t change their distance from each other. Perspective.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets take a look at what it looked like on Monday night to be looking up at Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon’s party.

Extraordinary. These three friends have another party planned, in the year 2052, so if you’re going to be around then I suggest you eavesdrop again. Between now and then, though, there are tons of parties going on in the night sky. You just have to be willing to look up. I know I will.

Photo credit: supersairuh.

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