Don't miss the moon & four planets aligning in the night sky this week

Agencies | Washington

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

If you are a space enthusiast and love to explore the sky but can’t, just because you don’t have the right scientific tools? Well, you’re in luck because this rare cosmic occurrence will be visible to you whether you have a telescope or not. The sky will showcase a rare phenomenon where four planets of our solar system, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, will align next to each other, forming a planetary quartet. This planetary alignment or conjunction will be visible to the naked eye before sunrise, of course, more clearly with a pair of simple binoculars. NASA had revealed that at the beginning of April, Mars, Venus and Saturn were all visible in the early morning. Now, the three planets are joined by Jupiter, and the four planets can be seen in a straight line for the rest of April.

According to NASA, a conjunction is a celestial event in which two planets, a planet and the Moon, or a planet and a star appear close together in Earth’s night sky. These have no profound astronomical significance whatsoever, but they are a visual treat.  NASA says that in our Solar System, conjunctions occur frequently between planets because the planets orbit around the Sun in approximately the same plane –  the ecliptic plane – and thus trace similar paths across our sky.

According to the space agency’s website, Venus’s orbit is closer to the Sun than the Earth’s, and Jupiter’s orbit is much farther away, so the proximity or alignment is actually just an illusion. NASA has said that this conjunction will continue on the morning of May 1st, but the positions of the planets, Jupiter and Venus, will be reversed. Due to the glare from both planets, observers will see them merge into a bright, spectacular glow.  This celestial event will be like the 2020 event when the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn was also visible to the naked eye.