Jupiter, Saturn and the moon to form 'smiley face' on May 12

Moon rises over Istanbul, Turkey, on July 27, 2018. (Emrah Gurel / AP)

TORONTO — Coronavirus fears keeping you awake? Well, you’ll have a friendly celestial face to keep you company on at least one sleepless night this month -- two planets are set to line up with the moon to create a “smiley face,” in an unusual event for skywatchers.

If you look up into the eastern sky during the early morning of May 12, you’ll see Jupiter and Saturn lined up in the sky close enough to look like eyes over the wide, open mouth of the moon, according to York University astronomy professor Paul Delaney.

You may have seen some exciting pictures floating around Twitter, promising a crescent-mooned smiley face with Venus, Jupiter and the moon sometime this month. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.

The claims appear to come from a 2010 article from a Philippines news outlet that resurfaced recently. Although it won’t be quite as dramatic, Jupiter and Saturn will still give us a reason to look up at the sky this month, according to Delaney.

This unique face in the sky is what’s called a “conjunction,” Delaney explained.

“Conjunctions are when you get a couple of planets, or a planet and the moon, in a relatively close apparent proximity,” he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “So, when you're looking in the sky, they're not very far apart. They are physically still hundreds of millions of kilometres apart. But from our perspective here on the surface of Earth, they look close together in the night sky.”

This is different from an occultation, where one object passes directly in front of another.

Delaney said that planets appear physically close to the moon in the sky many times a year as they go through their orbits around the sun.

But an event where two planets line up above the moon in this manner is much rarer.

“Jupiter and Saturn will be within about half a hand span, about five degrees away from the moon,” Delaney said. “It will look very much, as you say, like a smiley face.”

As the moon will be at the waning gibbous stage of its cycle, it’ll be a bit more of a wide, surprised expression than the emoticon-perfect smile that a crescent moon would’ve provided.

The right “eye” will be the brighter Jupiter, and the left will be Saturn, Delaney said.

Due to different perspectives of the moon, in the northern hemisphere, the planets will be poised above the moon’s smile, but from the southern hemisphere the smiley face will appear upside down.

“One will be a happy face. The other will be not quite so happy,” Delaney said. “It will be a sad configuration, if you will, for the folks in the southern hemisphere.”

It will appear for one night only, according to Delaney.

Jupiter and Saturn will be close to each other for May 11-13, but as the moon moves rapidly, it will only line up properly with Jupiter and Saturn to form a face in the early morning on May 12.

The best time to see it from Toronto will be 2:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. EST, but anyone getting up a few hours earlier in the morning should still be able to catch a glimpse. If you plan on staying up late the night before to spot it, Delaney warns that you probably won’t see anything before 2 a.m. at the earliest.

If that window is too narrow for you, and you’re looking for more conjunctions happening this month, Mercury and Venus will appear very close together in the sky around May 21, Delaney said.

Of course, the May 12 smiley face isn’t an actual sign from the heavens. Humans just love to see patterns in random places, a phenomenon called “pareidolia.” It’s why we can find shapes in clouds and why an asteroid flying by the Earth this week made headlines for appearing to be wearing a face mask.

But in times like these, when smiles are scarce, it’s nice to have the planets spread some positivity anyway.