KDSN RADIO News
Iowa stargazers are in for a treat later this month as planets align
Iowans who bundle up to brave the evening chill will be able to see a relatively rare event in the January night sky, what some are calling the Parade of Planets.
Allison Jaynes, a physics and astronomy professor at the University of Iowa, says Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all shifting into near-alignment, and two more planets — Uranus and Neptune — will join the celestial conga line later this month.
“What we can see in the sky changes all the time, and there are often up to four planets visible at once. The big deal about this thing coming up in the 21st through 25th or thereabouts, is that we’re technically going to be able to see six planets at the same time,” Jaynes says, “although two of them are too faint, really, to be seen with just your eyes, so people will need to use something like binoculars.”
Prof. Allison Jaynes (UI photo)
While you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, Jaynes says it’s true the six planets will be appearing in the same region of the sky, but they will not be in a tight, straight line.
“Some people have been spreading misinformation, it seems, about how those planets will be aligned, like there’s pictures showing them sort of lined up, one on top of each other, like they’re in a line from the Earth to the Sun, and that’s not going to happen,” she says, “but it makes for a nice graphic, so I think people have been sharing that on social media as a result.”
Budding backyard astronomers can quickly orient themselves among the stars above with the help of a few key websites or free applications for their smartphones.
“EarthSky.org is one of my favorite websites to go to look for celestial events,” Jaynes says, “but on your phone, there’s an app called Stellarium, and it uses your geographic coordinates as well as the angle that you’re holding your phone at at the moment to sort of give you a map as you’re pointing your phone around the sky of what you should be seeing at that moment.”
From solar and lunar eclipses to the Star of Bethlehem, rare celestial events over the centuries have been interpreted various ways, both as signs of good fortune or impending peril. It should be noted that this Parade of Planets will be best viewed the same week a new administration takes over the White House.
“People like to use these types of events to reinforce their already-held beliefs,” she says, laughing. “So if they’re upset about what’s going to happen at the end of January, this will be a harbinger of doom, and if they’re happy about it, this might be a cause for celebration.”
