One of the things I've enjoyed in the 22-plus years I've written the Night Sky column for Space.com is alerting readers to hoaxes or celestial falsehoods widely spread on the Internet.
Although I have done my best to steer readers away from such fallacies, I am still amazed at how many people take them as fact. In recent years, some of these claims, which have spread widely online, have become virtually untrue. So much so that you would think that very few people in our modern, 21st century technological world would be fooled.
But in reality - and I think because most people these days are driven by the mantra, "If it's on social media, it must be true" - a surprising number of people are fooled and take these promotions for granted.
And then, unfortunately, they spread them widely among family and friends.
Related: What equipment do you need to see and photograph the planets?
Previous heavenly shams
The most famous was of course the annual 'Mars Hoax', which occurred every August for about a decade. Since the Red Planet made a historically close approach to Earth in August 2003, a false story circulated online in the years that followed implying that Mars would appear in the sky on a specific night in late August and look the same size like the earth. like the full moon. Completely untrue of course, yet every year there were countless people who actually believed this would happen!
In 2015, a widely shared story online claimed that January 4, 2015 was "Zero Gravity Day," a date when people on Earth could experience weightlessness if they jumped into the air at some point. You have to wonder how many people worldwide actually tried to float on that day.
And later that same year, a fake news site reported that Earth would become dark on November 15, 2015, just before 3 a.m., and then the eerie darkness would finally lift on November 30 at 4:45 p.m.
Here we go again
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Every time crazy stories like this appear on the Internet, I get questions from people wanting clarification ("Is this true?"), or, in the case of the Mars Hoax, questions like, "Where is the best place and time for me to can you see this?"
That's why I'm getting a sense of déjà vu, as over the past few days more and more people have been messaging me about a supposedly "rare event" known as the "Parade of Planets" which will be visible before sunrise on June 3.
This claim is supported by an image circulating widely, especially on Facebook, where it is accompanied by comments such as:
"That sounds fun!"
"This is something I've been looking forward to"
'Quite a few astral phenomena lately,' and
"Another chance to see something extraordinary."
These last two comments undoubtedly refer to the recent solar eclipse and the Northern Lights.
And now many are under the impression that another spectacular celestial event is coming on the first Monday in June.
Except that it isn't.
Maker unknown
Let's first examine the ersatz image in question. There's no reference to who designed it, it's just "out there" for everyone to see. It shows six planets positioned along a diagonal line running upward from the silhouette horizon of a treescape (no direction indicated). And the planets are all shown as we would see them through a telescope.
Unfortunately, there is a certain percentage of the population that is unaware that you simply cannot see the planets as disks with the naked eye (for proof, go back to the Mars Hoax) ... nor Saturn's famous rings Incidentally. With just your eyes, the brighter planets simply appear as stars that rarely twinkle.
So people who plan to get up early and go outside on June 3 expecting to see Jupiter's inflated disk or Saturn's rings at a glance will be quite disappointed, to say the least.
Where are they?
And observing some of these planets will itself be problematic.
Mercury and Jupiter, for example, will be very close to the sun's position in the sky and so will likely be masked by the brilliant glow of dawn. You may be able to catch a glimpse of these two worlds with binoculars, but in addition to trying to see them in the early morning light, they will also be extremely low on the east-northeast horizon; they will both rise only about half an hour before sunrise.
So unless you have a nice flat horizon, with no obstacles (like distant buildings or trees), you can probably forget to see the solar system's smallest planet (Mercury) next to the largest planet (Jupiter).
Next comes Uranus, which is visible to the naked eye, but only under very dark, non-light-polluted skies; it is in fact close to the visibility threshold for most people without the use of any optical aid. Of course, to observe an object this faint, you need to know exactly where it is in the sky; a good star map will certainly help. But all of this is really just a moot point on June 3, as Uranus will rise only about an hour before sunrise, when dawn will be well advanced. So, like Mercury and Jupiter, there is no real chance of seeing Uranus either.
Interestingly, whoever created this misleading celestial depiction left out the most obvious of all celestial sights: the moon. On Monday morning, June 3, early risers will see a beautiful waning crescent moon hanging low in the eastern sky. And around 4 a.m. local daylight time, about six degrees to the right, there will be a relatively bright orange light; that will be Mars. Finally! A planet that is clearly visible without binoculars or a telescope.
Next comes the farthest planet from the Sun, Neptune, which is far too faint to see with the naked eye and lies at an average distance from the Sun of 2.8 billion miles. It is more than six times fainter than Uranus. So no chance of seeing that planet unless you have access to a dark sky, a star map and at least good binoculars or a telescope.
Finally, there is Saturn, which rises in the east-southeast around 2am. But the best view of it comes when the eastern sky begins to brighten, when Saturn is quite high in the southeast. Again, the rings are invisible unless you use a telescope; to the naked eye, Saturn appears as a relatively bright light that glows with a yellowish-white hue.
So if you step outside around 3:30 or 4:00 on a Monday morning, don't expect to be impressed by the sight of a parade of planets. What you'll likely see is a crescent moon and a bright orange "star" shining to the right (Mars), and further to the right another relatively bright "star" will glow with a yellowish-white hue (Saturn).
Not "rare" at all!
This does not mean that the planets will not align. Although you won't be able to see four of them visually (Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune), they will all still be out there and will indeed be positioned along a straight line in space.
That's because all planets revolve around the sun in more or less the same orbital plane. From here on Earth, that orbital plane is known as the ecliptic and all planets appear to travel along it. And it is not particularly rare to see a number of planets lined up along the ecliptic from our cosmic perspective here on Earth.
Just wait until next winter
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And if you want to see a truly striking planetary alignment - four bright planets plus a beautiful waxing crescent moon as a bonus, all at a glance - be sure to look at the early evening sky next winter shortly after 6pm on January 31, 2025 and/or February 1 .
That first night you will be able to see the moon sitting to the lower right of Saturn and the next night the moon will have moved to the lower left of dazzling Venus. Meanwhile, Jupiter, high in the southeast, will glow with a brilliant silvery light among the stars of Taurus the Bull, accompanied by the beautiful open star clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades.
And finally, high in the eastern sky, forming a striking triangle with Gemini's bright stars Pollux and Castor, the Twins, will appear amber Mars, appearing more than six times brighter than it appears to us now.
Compared to all that, June 3's exuberant "Parade of Planets" can best be described with a single word: disappointing.
Joe Rao is an instructor and guest lecturer in New York Hayden Planetarium. He prescribes on astronomy Natural history magazinethe Farmer's almanac and other publications.