Solar eclipse, Perseid meteor shower, and more: How to watch the rare 4-in-1 cosmic event this week
The stars will align on Wednesday.Stargazers should prepare for a series of space spectacles on August 12, as a solar eclipse, meteor shower, and a planetary parade are all gracing the skies on the same night.“It’s a very exciting opportunity for amateur astronomy observers, or really anyone who can get a shot at the clear sky,” Darryl Seligman, an astronomy professor at Michigan State University, told the Post.Kicking off this cosmic decathlon is the planetary alignment, in which Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune will appear in the sky simultaneously, Fox News reported.Skywatchers can catch the celestial sextet by looking toward the Eastern horizon around 30 minutes to an hour before sunrise.Saturn and Mars will be easiest to spot, followed by Mars and Mercury, although the latter two will sit low on the horizon and therefore clear, unobstructed view to catch them before they get lost in the sun’s glare.Meanwhile, viewing Uranus will require binoculars, while a telescope will likely be necessary to see Neptune, according to Seligman.Stargazers don’t need to wait until August 12 to see the show.
“The arrangement won’t change much in the next few days,” Qicheng Zhang, of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, told the Post.“So you should be able to basically see it now, with the further addition of a crescent moon that won’t be there by/after the 12th.”Despite their peculiar formation, the planets aren’t actually aligned.
The event is an optical illusion that occurs when the cosmic bodies appear in the sky simultaneously, even though they’re really millions to billions of miles apart and orbiting the Sun’s ecliptic plane at different speeds and distances.This heavenly happy hour will also see the arrival of a solar eclipse, in which the moon passes between the sun and the Earth.Unfortunately, the total version — when the sun is completely blotted out, seemingly turning day into night — will only shroud certain...