A rare alignment of 7 planets is about to take place

sciencealert.com

202 points by koolba 3 months ago


mcdeltat - 3 months ago

Apparently this is visible everywhere on Earth, which is cool. (Sometimes sites don't bother saying where and it turns out to only be visible in the US - very annoying for those who live elsewhere.)

https://starwalk.space/en/news/what-is-planet-parade

jmclnx - 3 months ago

Oh Noooos, the world will end :)

I remember all the dooms day articles the last time, then I think all 8 aligned. That is what Voyagers used to get to the outer planets quickly and were they are now.

This time, I saw nothing about "world ending". I guess they moved on to other things. Too bad NASA was not funded enough to use this to launch a more advanced spacecraft :(

ls65536 - 3 months ago

There's also a lunar occultation of Mars (which is near opposition itself, making it relatively bright) happening in a few days, and then again in February, which should be visible from parts of the northern hemisphere: https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20250114_16_100

serial_dev - 3 months ago

This sounds quite interesting. I’m considering buying a telescope for this occasion (we moved out of the city and I’ve been thinking about it for a while, the sky is always so clear around very).

What would you recommend as entry level beginner telescope? Is it worth observing all this via a telescope?

th0ma5 - 3 months ago

It is difficult for me to not just reflectively think of the spinny solar system model used in schools when the reality is an orbital plane that differs for each planet circling the gravity well drain plug of the sun and us all circling the drain of the black hole at the middle of the galaxy, itself hurling through space, and for all of this only to really mean anything in relation to other objects in specific contexts heh

escapsesequence - 3 months ago

Lots of celestial events in the US 2024/5! Eclipse, then aurora reaching down to southern New England, now this.

ashoeafoot - 3 months ago

Does that align all gravity creating a massive solar flare?

HelloUsername - 3 months ago

The infographic: https://starwalk.space/gallery/images/planetary-alignment-in...

vfclists - 3 months ago

How rare is it?

Synaesthesia - 3 months ago

Will this be visible in the Southern hemisphere?

pmdulaney - 3 months ago

Shouldn't there be some apocalyptic, end-of-the-world conspiracy theory to go along with this? I'm almost disappointed.

fractallyte - 3 months ago

Haha, 77 comments so far!

With this comment, I shall evilly spoil this particular 'alignment' ;-)

dehrmann - 3 months ago

These were interesting when I was a kid, but there are so many specifically rare astronomical events that I'm left with a whole lot of "meh."

stevep98 - 3 months ago

I don't get why everyone keeps talking about the planets aligning. All the planets are pretty much in the same plane. So if you are on one of the planets, all of the others will always be in a line.

edit: to those downvoting me, can you explain why?

juresotosek - 3 months ago

Oh no