It's In The Stars: Venus To Chase Saturn

April 10, 1995|By KIRK SAVILLE Staff Writer

Anyone with a good view and a reliable alarm clock should be able to watch a spectacular cosmic race between Venus and Saturn this week.

Just above the eastern horizon, Venus will approach Saturn during the early part of the week. By Thursday, the planets will be at their closest point, appearing to be separated by a distance no larger than the width of a full moon. For the rest of the month, the planets will travel away from each other.

The best time for watching will be between 5:40 a.m. and 6 a.m.

"It'll be a very pretty event," said Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium.

There aren't many stars visible in the eastern sky, so the planets should be easy to see if you have an unobstructed view of the horizon. To find the planets, look slightly south of due east. Venus is the bright object near the horizon. Saturn is the dimmer object.

The alignment of the two planets, as will happen on Thursday, is called a conjunction. While the planets are more than 800 million miles apart, from our vantage point it will look like Venus and Saturn are on a collision course.

At the beginning of the week Saturn will start out below Venus, and by the end of the month, Saturn will be above Venus.

The conjunction takes place because Venus is traveling around the sun much faster than Saturn.

"What's basically happening is a car race," said James Sharp, director of the Albert Einstein Planetarium of the Smithsonian Institution. "Some planets move faster than the other; inevitably, planets pass each other."

Conjunctions between the two planets are common, but often they are not visible.

"Usually it happens during the daylight and you can't see it," said John Oliver, an astronomer at the University of Florida.

Conjunctions were important events for ancient astronomers.

Some astronomers think that what is now called the Star of Bethlehem was actually a convergence of several planets.

Planets take their name from the Greek word for "wanderer."Ancient sky observers saw planets as moving more freely in the sky than stars.

Some attributed the independent movements to the belief that the planets were gods.

"If planets moved however they pleased and they came together, it was presumed the gods were having a meeting," Sharp said.

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