How to find out when planets will be where?

[Laer Carroll]

I'm well into my second Orphan sequel. In it an armada of aliens exits a spacetime portal near Saturn and head for Venus, intending to terraform it and establish themselves there. I want them to arrive there when Venus is furthest from Earth sometimes in the span of 2033 to 2037.

Any ideas how to find that out? Are there software tools I can download which can easily answer such questions?

I'd also like to know where Saturn will be when that event occurs, so I can backtrack the aliens and discover when they'd exit the portal. I'm assuming they can make the trip to Venus in a few days, no longer.

 

[jjdebenedictis]

When Venus is the furthest away from Earth, that's called a "superior conjunction".

This link lists all the superior conjunctions (and other information) for Venus from 1900 to 2050:
https://alabe.com/VeCycle-1.pdf

As for finding the position of Saturn at the same time, In-the-sky.org has a nice solar system viewer you can play around with (you can add Saturn to it via the options at the bottom of the page). Unfortunately, it only goes up to 2030:
https://in-the-sky.org/solarsystem.php

 

[jjdebenedictis]

Okay, I found something that will give you an idea of where everything is relative to one another after 2030. An "orrery" is a model of the solar system, and Martin Vezina made a javascript orrery you can play with here, including adding whatever date you want:
http://mgvez.github.io/jsorrery/

 

[Laer Carroll]

Martin Vezina made a javascript orrery you can play with here, including adding whatever date you want:
http://mgvez.github.io/jsorrery/

Exactly what I was looking for. Playing with it now. Thanks!

You started me thinking that I need to include a credits or Thank You page in the book when I publish it. Which would include you and Martin. Would you object if I included "J. J. Debenedictis" as one name?

 

[jjdebenedictis]

Of course I would not mind, but it also is not necessary. All I did was think to myself, "Hmm, that must already exist online somewhere," and then do some pleasantly-geeky sniffing about for the resources.

 

[Sarahrizz]

Well, for the average reader, we will not think to check star charts for the plausibility of things. If you tell us it takes ___ time to get to Venus, I'll assume it's fact. And if you say earth can't see the aliens coming, as I assume the reason for putting their arrival as far away from earth as possible, I won't question it.

 

[Kjbartolotta]

Now I can cast the birth charts of characters in futuristic settings! Provided they were born in the Solar System. Hmm.