May 2000

by Steve Stefanik

The much heralded alignment of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will occur the first two weeks of May. The media and many of the newstand tabloids have sensationalized the event with speculation of doomsday events. The reality is that these five planets will appear in a line of sight extending 27 degrees across the sky on the opposite side of the sun from our perspective. As a result we will not be able to see them through the glare of the sun and in fact they are millions and in the case of Jupiter and Saturn, billions of miles from Earth. The total mass of all the planets does not even begin to approach the mass of the sun. Therefore, any gravitational effect would be indiscernable let alone immeasurable. NOT TO WORRY!

However, the planets Mercury and Mars are visible low in in the western sky as the sun sets. Mars will dominate the first half of the month. Look for the red +1.5 magnitude planet low in the west-southwest about 45 minutes after the sun sinks below the horizon the first couple of weeks of the month. On May 18, it will be 2 degrees to the left of a rising Mercury. This will be the best appearance of Mercury this year. By the end of the month it should be easy to spot ths -1.5 magnitude elusive planet.

Venus on the other hand will be much more difficult to spot because it reaches no more than than 5 to 10 degrees above the northeastern horizon and will be quicly lost in the glare of the rising sun. On May 17 you may be fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time to catch a very close conjuction of Venus with Jupiter. Venus passes within the width of Jupiter’s disk, the closest planetary conjunction until the year 2013 when Mars is in conjunction with Uranus.