My mother was, if nothing else, a freewheeling and open-minded soul. So it was far from incongruous that she should have brought her two pre-adolescent sons to the original Broadway production of “Hair,” the freewheeling open-minded musical that turns 50 this year. My brother and I knew to anticipate the scene when cast members throw off their clothes, but memorable as that moment might have been to a young boy’s mind, what really stuck over the years was the music.
I thought of this music again last week as the moon peeked through the clouds over Old Bromfield. Peeking alongside was Jupiter, aligned about as close to Miss Luna as the two of them ever get. For perhaps no reason other than this chance alignment, I thought of the lyrics of “Aquarius,” the opening song in “Hair”: “When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars.”
Fellow sky walkers, in a coincidence that begs for mystic crystal revelations (to further quote from the song), the moon just happened to be in the seventh house that night, meaning in the constellation of Libra. What’s more, Jupiter did in fact align with Mars, and continues to do so as the month of May offers us a cornucopia of springtime planets. Better still, early risers and night owls both have a chance at seeing planets in the weeks ahead.
Around sunset: Venus
Our tour of the springtime planets starts with Venus. For the past few weeks, Venus has been shining brightly from her perch in the western sky. Venus is visible after sunset from many places in town, but none better than the lookout above Fruitlands on Prospect Hill Road. Once the sun dips below the horizon (around 8 p.m. this week), Venus will emerge from the twilight as a faint dot on the still-blue sky. To spot Venus in the aftermath of sunset, look about 30 degrees up from the horizon, and a little to the left of where the sun just set.
In the hour after sunset, Venus becomes a bright beacon in the darkening sky. All this brilliance comes from the fact that Venus is currently almost fully illuminated. If you have access to a telescope, such as the library’s StarBlast lend-a-scope, Venus will appear as a small disk. When I wrote about Venus last April, however, the telescope view of Venus was as a thin crescent that delineated a much larger disk. What happened in the interim?
At this time last year, Venus and Earth were on the same side of the sun in their orbits. From that sight angle, most of the illuminated portion of Venus was not visible from Earth, much as with the crescent moon. Venus has a 220-day year, so one Earth-year later, Venus is now on the far side of her orbit, appearing as a more fully illuminated disk (as with the nearly full moon). Being so far away, however, she now appears much smaller.
Between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m. Jupiter rises
Around the time that Venus beckons brightly in the west, Jupiter rises in the east. If you go out to an open area around 8:45 p.m. this week, you can see the planets on opposite ends of the sky. Stand facing south and put your arms out to your sides: Your right hand will be pointing to Venus, and your left hand to Jupiter.
This week, Jupiter is at opposition, meaning that the sun, Earth, and Jupiter lie on one straight line. Jupiter is as close to us in his orbit as he will be all year, making this planet a must-see for anyone with binoculars or a telescope. Fellow sky walkers, I have seldom seen such fabulous views of Jupiter as I have this week: With my telescope at 171×, Jupiter and his companion Galilean moons loom large enough to fill the entire frame of the eyepiece. At 44 arcseconds in width, Jupiter appears nearly four times wider than Venus right now (12 arcseconds).
In the small hours
For the next stop on our planetary tour, you will need to be a serious night owl or set an alarm for the middle of the night. I set mine for 2:30 Tuesday morning. With Saturn rising around midnight and Mars an hour and a half later, those two planets were already well above the horizon when I got to the Slough Road conservation land. The sketch below shows the panorama that greeted me. Stretching across the sky in a graceful arc were Miss Luna, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. Keeping them company were two of the zodiacal constellations: Scorpio and Sagittarius. See Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: The view Tuesday, May 8, from the Slough Road conservation area. (Drawings by Marc Vilain)
Figure 2: Jupiter and Saturn, as sketched from the eyepiece.
While I have seen planetary alignments that also included Venus and Mercury, seldom have I seen the planets look as fetching as in the small hours Tuesday. You will not regret dragging yourself out of bed, and if you have access to a telescope, ever the better: It’s unusual to have such good views of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars at the same time. The sketch should help you locate the planets; if there’s any doubt, Jupiter is creamy white, Saturn deep yellow, and Mars is red. The alignment will be obvious. See Figure 2 drawings.
Astrological musings
With the chirps of peeper frogs turning into the calls of songbirds, I thought again of the lyrics to “Aquarius” as I dismantled my telescope in Tuesday’s pre-dawn light. Fifty years after the fact, I had finally looked up what the words meant. In Western astrology, the moon being in the seventh zodiacal house makes Miss Luna governed by Venus. That’s a lot of concentrated female energy, with a corresponding concentration of male energy in the alignment of Jupiter and Mars. “This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius,” the song goes on to say. Aquarians, among other traits, are supposed to be all about new beginnings, about creation, about looking into the future.
I don’t usually hold much more than passing curiosity for astrology, but on this morning, surrounded by the mating calls of frogs and birds, surrounded by all the boundless vitality of the natural world bursting back into life, the lyrics just seemed to fit. If this was not an Aquarian moment, I don’t know what would be. Fellow sky walkers, I wish you many such moments under springtime’s night skies.
An altogether different kind of planetary alignment, “Venus and Mars” by Sandro Botticelli. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Marc Vilain walks the night sky, looking for planets from the roads and fields of Harvard.
