No planetary alignment, sorry. But Venus, Saturn to dazzle. Where to look in Florida

We don’t get the “planetary alignment” everyone has been talking about it on social media these past few weeks, sorry.

But throughout January, four bright planets were all visible at the same time. in the night skywhich was amazing, and if you look up at the right time over the next two nights you’ll see two extremely close together.

On January 17 and 18, Venus and Saturn, which have been shining all month in the southwest sky in the early evening, will appear next to each other before our eyes.

Sky full of planets in January

Venus and Saturn have been moving closer together (from our perspective) in recent weeks – the phenomenon is called a “conjunction” – and on Friday and Saturday night they will appear within a few fingers of each other, according to NASA.

Sure, they’ll still be hundreds of millions of miles apart, but they look very close. About 2.2 degrees away, or about four full moons, according to Sky at night.

Throughout this month, six planets will be visible in the night sky, four of which are visible to the naked eye. Not in what we consider a straight line; two of them will be on one side of the sky and the others will be on the opposite side.

In the first hours after dark all month, you’ll be able to see Venus and Saturn in the southwest, Jupiter overhead, and Mars in the east, according to NASA. If you have a telescope and an app to help you find them, you can also see Uranus and Neptune.

Does a planetary alignment occur on January 25?

No more than usual.

The planets of our solar system are always aligned. They orbit the sun in more or less the same flat plane as the Earth, depending on EarthSky.orgcalled the ecliptic. The sun, the moon and the planets all seem to us to travel across the sky every day and night from east to west on this same imaginary trajectory.

From the surface of the Earth, the planets always appear somewhere along this line, the same line that the sun and moon follow, if not a straight line.

How to See Planetary “Alignment” in January

THE Old Farmer’s Almanac suggests checking the January 16 cosmic display like this.

• Start at 6:30 p.m. and look west to see super-bright Venus shining in the sky. You can’t miss it.

• A little to the left will be something brighter than the stars but much dimmer than Venus. It’s Saturn. You will have an hour or two to see them before they disappear over the horizon.

• Turn east. The brightest light will be Jupiter, quite high in the sky. The lowest light in the east will be Mars, which will have an orange tint.

“If it’s cloudy, everything in the east will be the same for many evenings to come,” says the Old Farmer’s Almanac, although by the 20th Venus and Saturn will move away from each other. other.

This article originally appeared in the Daytona Beach News-Journal: Venus-Saturn conjunction to dazzle the night sky. How to watch