This week’s word had an opportunity to come out of obscurity and shine brightly but the opportunity was lost in the clouds.

On Monday of last week the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Dr Nick Lomb, the Sydney Observatory’s astronomer was predicting a ‘rare cosmic alignment’ in the night sky above Sydney for about three hours. It was to produce a huge smiling face in the sky consisting of the planets, Venus and Jupiter, forming two brilliant eyes and the crescent moon, directly below, forming a big smile.

Syzygy derives from the classical Latin and Greek word, syzygia meaning yoke, pair, union of two, conjunction, copulation, from syn, together and zygon, yoke.

Technically, in astronomy, a syzygy is the conjunction or opposition of two heavenly bodies (the Sun, Moon or planets) in a straight line relative to the earth. Examples of syzygies are solar and lunar eclipses, transits and occultations, and can also refer to the times of New Moons or Full Moons (ie the Sun and Moon are in conjunction or opposition although not precisely in one line with the Earth).

Syzygy is also used (according to Wikipedia) to describe interesting configurations of planets in general, which, of course, our smiley face was.

The SMH reported that although Dr Lomb was not superstitious and did not believe in omens he had noted that the syzgyy was to appear on the eve of the Reserve Bank’s meeting considering interest rates (interest rates were significantly lowered).

However the cloud cover over Sydney obscured the syzygy and the reporting of it did not go beyond using alignment. However, do not despair, lets get ready to brush the word off when next we see our smiley face in the early hours of July 21, 2036.