This is a community of astronomy enthusiasts from Chennai. Feel free to post anything related to astronomy and science. Please maintain decorum online and do not spam. Wish you clear skies!
Hi nice club btw
I am interested in astronomy very much and I am in school
1 Like
Hi Iam Biju Chandran new to the geouo. Ia there any event on Jan 25th to witness the planetary alignments
Hello Biju, welcome.
I know there has been messages and video forwards that have been claiming about some once in a lifetime planetary alignment. This sensational junk forwards happens every now and then. Not just with planets, they’ll also be doing that with supermoons and some meteor showers.
Just to clarify,
-
Planets always line up in an arc, as they share the same orbital plane as earth. Every couple of years, you’ll be able to see about 4 planets naked eye from most places on earth and in some years, you’ll be able to see 5 (including mercury) from a lot of places on earth (not most as it is too close to the sun and hard to spot from some extreme latitudes)
-
Unless you are in some really low pollution areas, it’s not possible to spot Uranus. However with some small power optical aids (a small telescope or small binoculars) you can spot both Uranus and Neptune.
-
These planets have been visible from around late November last year and will continue to be visible even in February. Therefore, there’s nothing you’d miss if you didn’t manage to see them on 25/January.
-
When it comes to meteor showers, do not go by how many are reported in an hour. Look when the radiant point is at the highest in your sky. Look if it is at night and if so, where the moon is.
-
Supermoons, I can guarantee, you wouldn’t see any difference between it and a normal full moon when viewed naked eye. Unless you observe full moons regularly using a smaller field scope and remember exactly how much of the field was covered by the normal full moon, you’ll not be able to appreciate the supermoons. Even for those folks who do observe regularly, it will be difficult. There are many here who are keen astrophotographers. Only for them, when they take pictures with the same settings and compare, it will be easily visible.
So, I’d suggest, look out for such events from websites of astronomical organisations than from social media forwards.
I take no pleasure in snubbing off your interest. So, please don’t take this in a wrong way. There are amazing things to lookout for including seeing the planets that you mentioned about. Therefore, I’d request you to completely get rid of the images that you’ve seen in any videos or magazines or even here from some of our amazing astrophotographers from your memory and think that you are going to see bright Stars in a line from west to east and then go out and look.
You’ll surely see many of the planets, like you see stars and may even confuse yourself with some stars instead of planets. Take it all in, try and remember where you saw what, then get inside and look up some planaterium software like stellarium and compare what’s shown there in default zoom to what you had actually seen. That I hope will be more satisfying and wouldn’t disappoint.
If you need further help, please ask, it’s a very friendly bunch here and someone would always help.
2 Likes