Mother Nature put on a show for skywatchers gathered at Smith Point last week to witness a rare Planetary Parade.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, the sky blazed with an intense red sunset fringed with the atmosphere’s rich blue tones. The orange-red slowly deepened and covered the sky as if it were splashed with paint.
Venus was the first planet to appear out of the stellar palette, twinkling high in the sky with the reflected light of the sun. The red planet Mars was next, followed by Earth’s other solar companions, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn. The amateur astronomers perched with binoculars on the Fire Island National Seashore tower could also behold Uranus and Neptune. They gazed at the vibrant rings of Saturn and four of Jupiter’s largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They are referred to as Galilean moons, having been first observed by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610, and are still fascinating people more than 400 years later.
The modern skywatchers used phone apps such as Star Tracker to show the positions of the planets and every other object in the sky, including Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites and the International Space Station. The names of the stars were displayed on the app, along with depictions of the constellations they are part of. In the Smith Point parking lot, ham radio operators listened to communications from the space station astronauts.
Pluto, which was not part of the celestial parade, is no longer considered a planet, as per the Astronomical Union in 2006. Earthlings will not experience a line-up of the seven planets again until 2028.