An incredible event in the night sky last night as the brightest planets in the solar system were lined up in the western sky at sunset above the mountain range between Barga and the Mediterranean sea.
In an almost straight line below the crescent moon the planets Jupiter and Venus dominated the sky with the planet Mercury joining the cosmic trio briefly just after sunset before slipping below the horizon once again
If that was not enough, a little later and over towards the east, the planet Mars also put in an appearance. A rare occurrence and one which apart from its natural beauty sometimes caused people to wonder about their future.
It seems that every decade or so, humanity is warned by gloom-and-doom soothsayers that a planetary alignment will take place in the near future and cause havoc on the Earth.
Of course, it is not astronomers that give these warnings, but instead, astrologers and psychics who have very often have limited knowledge of the night sky or the solar system in general.
“Although being able to see these objects simultaneously doesn’t have any scientific value as such, it is a really fun opportunity to get a sense of how we fit in the universe,” said Geza Gyuk, an astronomer with the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
“It is a bit like looking at an astronomy class in a nutshell.”
A question on the NASA site asks: Could phenomena occur where planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
They reply: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.
And for those of you who love to find meaning in events such as planetary alignments, I am sorry to say that you will be disappointed: the alignment isn’t real — merely an artefact of perspective.
If you were in a different vantage point, say, floating in space far above the Sun and looking down on the solar system, there would be no such alignment.
Just to confirm what you say Keane, we were in Kerala, South India at the time and noticed the alignment but the pattern was quite different. One planet (Venus I think) appeared above the moon and the other (probably Jupiter appeared below the moon. The third planet was not visible where we were. The alignment was also not perfect though the two planets were equidistant above and below the moon.