During the month of May, as most of you know, the world is predicted to come
to the end. That end is predicted because all of the visible planets are
aligning in a surprisingly straight line on the other side of the Sun. The
fact that this has occurred many times in the Earth's past should not be
allowed to diminish your sense of dread.

However, it shouldn't be allowed to diminish your sense of awe, either,
especially in regards to what we can do nowadays. There is a particularly
cool MPEG movie at:

     http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2000_05_03/lasco_c3.mpg

that shows the planets converging in the image field of the Large Angle and
Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on board the SOHO satellite ("SOlar and
Heliospheric Observatory"). The disc in the center of the image is an
obscuring disc, designed to blot out the image of the Sun so that the outflow
from the Sun's corona can be observed. The planets in the image are (left to
right): Saturn, Jupiter, and Mercury. Venus will enter the field of view on
May 15.

The straight lines attached to the planets are not rings around the planets
but are rather due to CCD cell leakage in the imaging array because of point
overexposures.

My only advice is that, on or just before May 15th, be sure that you have
good backups.

Wirt Atmar