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TORONTO –
Does the coronavirus fear keeping you awake? Well, you’ll have a friendly heavenly face to keep you company for at least one sleepless night this month: Two planets will line up with the moon to create a “smiley face,” in an unusual event for sky watchers.
If you look up into the eastern sky during the early morning hours of May 12, you’ll see Jupiter and Saturn lined up in the sky close enough to look like eyes over a wide open-mouthed smile from the moon, according to York University. astronomy teacher Paul Delaney.
This unique face in the sky is what is called a “conjunction,” Delaney explained.
“Conjunctions are when you have a couple of planets, or a planet and the moon, in relatively close apparent proximity,” he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “So when you look at the sky they are not very far apart. They are still physically hundreds of millions of kilometers away. But from our perspective here on Earth’s surface, they look very close together in the night sky. “
This is different from a concealment, where one object passes directly in front of another.
Delaney said planets physically appear close to the moon in the sky many times a year as they traverse their orbits around the sun.
But an event where two planets align on the moon in this way is much rarer. One notable occurrence of this phenomenon was in 2008, when a smiling face made of Venus, Jupiter, and the moon was visible from Australia.
“Jupiter and Saturn will be within about half a hand, about five degrees from the moon,” Delaney said. “It will look a lot, as you say, like a smiling face.”
Since the moon will be in the waning gibbous stage of its cycle, it will be a slightly broader and more excited smile than the perfect smiley smile that a crescent moon would have provided.
The right “eye” will be Jupiter, and the left “eye” will be Saturn, Delaney said.
Due to the different perspectives of the moon, in the northern hemisphere, the planets will be positioned on the moon’s smile, but from the southern hemisphere the smiling face will appear upside down.
“One will be a happy face. The other one won’t be as happy, “Delaney said.” It will be a sad setup, so to speak, for people in the southern hemisphere. “
It will only appear for one night, according to Delaney.
Jupiter and Saturn will be close to each other from May 11-13, but as the moon moves rapidly, it will only align properly with Jupiter and Saturn to form a face in the early morning hours of May 12.
The best time to see it from Toronto will be 4 a.m. at 5 a.m. EST, but anyone who gets up a few hours early in the morning should still be able to take a look. If you plan to stay up late the night before to detect it, Delaney warns that you probably won’t see anything before 2 a.m. at the earliest.
Of course, this happy face is not a real sign from heaven. Humans love to see patterns in random places, a phenomenon called “pareidolia.” That’s why we can find cloud shapes and why an asteroid flying through Earth this week made headlines for looking like it was wearing a face mask.
But at times like these, when smiles are rare, it’s good for planets to spread some positivity anyway.
If you’re looking for more conjunctions this month, Mercury and Venus will appear close together in the sky around May 21, Delaney said.
