Social media may go wild the next few days – filled with reports of UFOs in the early morning sky. Ignore them. The objects are fully identified. They’re the planets Venus and Jupiter – the brightest objects in the night sky after the Moon. They’re crossing paths, as Jupiter pulls away from the Sun as seen from Earth, and Venus drops toward it. Venus is the brighter of the two.

Venus and Jupiter could have a big influence on our own planet – not astrologically, but gravitationally.

The planets all probably moved around a lot when the solar system was young. Today, their configuration is stable. And it should remain stable for hundreds of millions of years.

But it’s impossible to predict beyond that. Tiny differences in a planet’s current orbit could have a big impact on its position in the far distant future. As a planet moves toward or away from the Sun, its gravity pushes and pulls the other planets, changing their location.

Earth is most influenced by the gravity of Venus – which passes closer to us than any other world – and Jupiter – the most massive planet. They squeeze and stretch Earth’s orbit over a cycle of about 400,000 years. In the distant future, they could destabilize the orbit – dramatically changing Earth’s place in the solar system.

Look for these “influential” planets beginning a couple of hours before sunrise. They remain visible deep into the dawn twilight.

Script by Damond Benningfield