A celestial event being hyped by some internet sites as an extremely rare planetary alignment has been oversold, astronomers are saying, but it should be a cool show if the sky is clear Saturday evening.
The event has been portrayed by some as if six planets are queuing up one after another in a conga line, making it an epic event not to be missed. One headlined it as, “,” and others have used similar hyperbole.
“Thatap the alignment that the people who don’t know what they’re talking about are claiming,” said Jeff Hunt, a retired Illinois planetarium director whose website () tracks interesting celestial events for amateur sky gazers.
It should be worth checking out, though. An hour after sunset, Venus and Saturn will be visible in the southwest, with Mars and Jupiter in the east. All four will be visible to the naked eye.
“At least 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, you can see all four of them easily in an arc, starting in the southwest and coming back to the east-northeast,” Hunt said. “They’re lined up along the plane of the solar system.”
Venus and Saturn will be seen low in the southwestern sky with Saturn below Venus. Venus passed Saturn last week.
“Jupiter is higher in the sky in the east, noticeably dimmer than Venus,” Hunt said. “Venus is the brightest star-like object and Jupiter is the next brightest, higher in the eastern sky. Mars is distinctly reddish, rosey or peach color, down to the lower left of Jupiter. Itap the third-brightest planet, but the star Sirius is slightly brighter. Venus, Jupiter and Mars are distinctly brighter than almost everything else in the sky,” except for the moon.
They are not clustered together, though.
“We’re seeing them along the plane of the solar system (across) the sky,” Hunt said. “They’re not all lined up; they’re scattered on the same side of the solar system, and we see them along the arc of the solar system. People are calling that this magic alignment. They just misunderstand it.”
Two other planets will fall along that arc. Uranus should be visible with binoculars. Neptune will be on that arc, but probably too faint to see.
The next celestial event of note will be a total lunar eclipse, visible in Denver the night of March 13-14.
