On April 4 and April 5, 2022, Mars and Saturn lived side by side above the firmament. An hour before sunrise, look down from east to southeast. Image credit: John Jardine Goss
The morning conjunction of Mars and Saturn
On the mornings of April 4 and April 5, Mars and Saturn will form a beautiful ensemble. The duo is closely linked, with Mars and Saturn shining at magnitudes 1.0 and 0.9, respectively. The two planets are about 0.5° apart from each other — in other words, they are the same distance from the full moon.
An hour before sunrise, look east to southeast. What jumps into your eyes will be the bright Venus, the hustle and bustle. But look to the west (right) of Venus for two intimate, closely connected points of light. The pair of closely connected points of light are Saturn and Mars. Can you tell who's who? Mars will have a red glow, and at the same time, Saturn will look yellow-white. Does Mars look slightly brighter? Or is the red light of Mars more important than what makes Saturn look?
On April 4, Saturn will be on the left and Mars will be on the right, and will be in extremely low altitude. On April 5, Mars will move to the lower left of Saturn, which is only a little closer to the planet.
Recall the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Memory
This conjunction will not be as close as the Jupiter and Saturn conjunction on December 21, 2020, when Jupiter and Saturn were at 6 arc minutes in the dome. On that day, the planets did not merge with each other, but remained stable with each other like bright beacons. By then, Jupiter will have a brightness of 2 and Saturn will have a brightness of 0.6. So Jupiter would eclipse Saturn, but Mars and Saturn are equally distant.
In general: Mars and Saturn will meet on the 4th and 5th of April, at a distance as long as the diameter of a full moon in a dome.
Related knowledge
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in the Solar System. It has a mass of 2.5 times the masses of the other planets combined, and is a huge planet filled with gas, but it has less than one-thousandth of its mass compared to the Sun. Jupiter is the third brightest planet in Earth's night sky, only slightly less luminous than the Moon and Venus.
Humans have been observing Jupiter since prehistoric times; it is named after Jupiter, the king of the gods in Roman mythology.
Jupiter is mostly made of hydrogen, but helium occupies a quarter of Jupiter's mass and a tenth of its volume. It may have a rock core made of heavy metals, but, like other giant planets, Jupiter doesn't have a definite solid surface. The ongoing contraction in Jupiter's interior produces much more heat than it receives from the Sun. Because it rotates quickly, it is flattened as a whole. It has a slight but pronounced bulge near the equator. Jupiter's outer atmosphere divides into very distinct cloud bands at different latitudes, and the boundaries are often accompanied by turbulence and storms. A prime example of this meteorological action is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that was present at least in the 17th century when telescopes first observed it.
Jupiter is surrounded by a faint system of planetary rings, but with a strong magnetosphere. Jupiter's magnetic tail is nearly 800 million kilometers (5.3 astronomical units, 500 million miles) long, and its influence covers almost the entire orbit of Saturn, Jupiter has 80 known moons, but perhaps more, including four huge Galilean moons (discovered by Galileo in 1610) – Ganymede, Ganymede, Ganymede, and Ganymede.
Ganymede and Europa are about the same size as the Moon on Earth, and Ganymede is almost as big as Mercury, but Ganymede is the most.
Pioneer X was the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter, which approached Jupiter in December 1973, which has been probed several times by robotic spacecraft. From 1973 to 1979, it began with the exploration of Pioneer and Voyager, followed by the landing of Jupiter in 1995 by Galileo. In 2007, New Horizons used gravity to speed up the detection of Jupiter, causing it to change the orbit that originally led to Pluto, and in June 2016, juno, the spacecraft that most recently detected Jupiter, entered the orbit of Jupiter, and future detection targets in Jupiter include The liquid ocean covered by ice in Europa.
Saturn is the sixth-farthest planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about 9.5 times that of Earth. It is only 1/8 of the average density of the Earth. However, Saturn is larger and has 95 times the mass of Jupiter
Saturn's interior is likely to be a core made up of iron-nickel and rocks (silicon and oxygen compounds). Its core is surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, a layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium in the middle, and finally a gaseous outer layer. Saturn 's upper atmosphere contains ammonia crystals , hence a yellowish tinge. The current in the metal hydrogen layer is thought to have produced Saturn's planetary magnetic field, and although it is weaker than Earth's magnetic field, its magnetic moment is 580 times that of Earth because Saturn is larger. Saturn 's magnetic field is about one-twentieth the strength of Jupiter's. The outer atmosphere shows a more long-term feature that is usually more stable and lacks differences. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1800 km/h (1100 mph; 500 m/s), taller than Jupiter, but not as tall as Neptune.
The prominent ring system is the most notable feature of the planet, which is composed mainly of ice particles and a small amount of rock debris and dust. At least 83 moons orbit Saturn, 53 of which are officially named, not counting the hundreds of small moons that orbit it. Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the second largest moon in the solar system larger than Mercury. Despite its small mass, it is the only satellite in the solar system with a large atmosphere.
BY：Kelly Kizer Whitt
FY：Astronomical volunteer team
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