Artists’ impressions of the solar system
Shutterstock/Vadim Sadovski
All of our solar system planets line up in the night sky once this week. This extraordinary celestial event will see the sky scattered with seven visible planets in what is called a great planet alignment, or what is called a “planet parade.”
The eight planets in our solar system first formed from the same disc of debris around the sun, thus bringing the sun into orbit on roughly the same plane. The lines that line this plane appear along the zodiac when the sun crosses the daytime sky, as the sun crosses the daytime sky, appear all along the zodiac when the planets appear in the sky. The orbit is slightly tilted, so it’s not the perfect line of the planet, but it’s pretty close.
This is less obvious than during planetary alignment. Normally, only a few planets share the night sky, but the unusual alignment of all seven planets will be visible around a few nights, around February 28, depending on your location.
The best time to see is right after sunset, and you will have the opportunity to see all the planets arching in the sky, but all of them are near the horizon except Mars, Jupiter and Uranus. These three will continue to stroll all night, but by the time the sky is completely dark, Mercury and Saturn will sink below the horizon, and Neptune and Venus will soon follow.
The main thing that prevents such alignments from being invisible all the time is the difference in orbital periods between planets, except for the weather. Mercury closest to the Sun takes about 88 Earth days to complete its orbit, but Neptune, most of the distant planets, takes nearly 165 Earth years.
It is only possible to have a large alignment if the planets are all relatively far from the Sun, so they can be seen at night, so they are all in roughly the same half of the sky, so they can be seen at the same time. It’s a coincidence of an astonishing trajectory. Sometimes there are multiple large alignments per year, sometimes even if there are no more than one year, it can pass. A similar event is not scheduled to occur until 2040.
“It’s great to see the interest that Planet Parade is creating.” David Armstrong At the University of Warwick, UK. “It’s all great to be involved in astronomy, look up at the sky and evaluate the wonders of our solar system. I encourage anyone interested in going out and looking at the planets with their own eyes if they get the chance in the next few days.”
Additional Reports by Alex Wilkins
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Source: www.newscientist.com
