Planets Align So Rare

Planets Align So Rare

    There's magic in the air, or so said the song made popular decades ago as sung by Olivia Newton John.  And indeed, to the ancients (even the current ancients like me), looking up into the night sky must have seemed like magic, the stars suddenly brightening as the clouds left and the surrounding light darkened.  But an even more puzzling piece of that magic happened when the stars --or in this case, planets-- aligned.  When they occasionally did align back to back, many prophets predicted a cataclysm for the earth, the supposed strain of the combined gravities pulling our oceans apart (one such alignment of just Mars, Venus and the moon a year ago brought this from the U.K.'s Express: Unusual alignments of the planets has often been linked to what some believe will be the “End of Days”.  Rare formations such as this have been the prelude to “blood moons” - terrifying events which some Christians believe mark the second coming of Christ.  The Bible warns “the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD comes”.  Modern psychics have offered similar calamitous predictions.  But this alignment, last seen nearly ten years ago, is simply one of wonder.

    Look at the simple charts, as shown in The Conversation or in this view from the U.S. by EarthSky.  As one astronomer told The New York Times, “It’s not super-often you get to see them all at the same time in the sky, it’s like seeing all of your friends at once,” said Jackie Faherty, an astronomer from the American Museum of Natural History.  “There they are, the other rocks or balls of gas that are running around the sun.” 

Graph from EarthSky.org

    All of this began yesterday and will continue for another month or so, repeating its show in the southern hemisphere in August.  And even this morning, as I stood in the cold and tried to find the proper alignment, picking out the five bright planets, I got lost in the wonder of so many stars, and how few times I had stepped out into the cold winter morning before dawn and just stared up at the sky.  Traffic and car lights hadn't started, the only lights being a dulled porch light or two; but overhead was a dazzling sheet of darkness punctured by lighted planets so distant that they seem little more than dots.  The best view for those in the U.S. will be looking to the south and southeast.  According to EarthSky: No matter where you are on Earth, here’s a very fun observation to make this month: Venus before dawn.  Venus is the brightest planet and third-brightest sky object overall, after the sun and moon.  When it’s visible, it’s very, very prominent in our sky...step outside some early morning, and look in your southeast sky.  You’ll surely see Venus shining there.  It’s the third-brightest celestial body to adorn the heavens, after the sun and moon.  

    You've likely read some of my earlier musings on our celestial awe, or perhaps viewed the 3-D version of the recent movie, The Martian, to give you an idea of what stands between where we're standing and those tiny dots.  But in a piece by The Week, author Todd Pitock writes that we're losing this "sight of the stars": For roughly the past two decades, at least two-thirds of the U.S. population has not been able to see the Milky Way at all, and it will get worse before it gets better.  The dawn of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting is expected to significantly lower costs and spur consumption.  In addition, LED lighting produces light with a bluer cast, which is more effectively scattered by the atmosphere...People are barely aware that "we've had an incredible part of our humanity taken away from us, but it's been so gradual, they don't feel the loss," he (Kelly Carroll, a National Park Service ranger at Great Basin) said.  "The connection with the stars is inside all of us, but it has been sequestered away."

    A similar loss was noted by Hank Lentfer in a piece for The Nature Conservancy: ...the stage really belongs to the snow, which makes a whispering click --so soft I have to hold my breath to hear it-- every time a flake lands and piles up on the outstretched fingers of the spruce boughs above me.  For more than 40 years, I walked through nature’s concert hall every day without really listening.  Sure, I heard the big stuff, the buffeting storms and bugling whales.  Sounds so loud you’d have to be dead not to notice.  But I was missing the subtle things, the small sounds, the way the music changes from predawn to first light, from equinox to solstice...I’ve realized that my ears always worked fine—I’d just forgotten how to use them.  And I suspect I’m not the only one.  Our senses get over-whelmed by the constant flicker of screens, the tang of exhaust, the whine of engines and the obstruction of ear buds.  Eyes and ears fill and clog, growing dull with overuse.  We’re nurturing a collective deafness.  It seems that the louder things get, the less we hear...Biodiversity is not just a concept or goal or management objective.  The Earth’s rich mosaic of life has a complex and gorgeous voice.  A voice that swells here when Earth tilts toward the sun and birds flow north to build nests.  A voice that subsides with the onset of winter. A  voice as subtle as the whirring flutter of a dragonfly’s wings over a still forest pond.  A voice as riveting and wild as the cry of a cougar or howling of a wolf.

    Gregory Castle, CEO of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, once wrote about running and balance: When you're running on trails, steadiness becomes supremely important.  Rocks, roots and uneven ground are among the common hazards that can cause your feet to land erratically...Yet our bodies are ingenious at adapting.  Trail runners, and anyone else who suddenly stumbles or trips on a rough patch of sidewalk, automatically call upon reflexes to keep their balance.  It goes without saying that we have many, mostly unconscious, reactions that are designed to keep us upright and stable.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. 

    In today's fast-paced world where daily stresses only add to distractions, we change satellite channels, tune-out, finish work, make dinner, want to escape.  And perhaps all that is really needed is finding our "balance" once again.  We listen but as Hank Lentfer noted above, we really don't "listen."  We see, but as Kelly Carroll noted above, we don't really "see."  At one time we did all of these things, we treasured the quiet so that we could hear; we longed for the night so that we could see.  In the next few weeks, the heavens above are giving us another show, another chance to regain some of that balance lost from long ago.  Step outside in the cold night air, just this once.  You may be dazzled by what you'll see, something that's been there all along...a sense of balance.