Rare ‘planet parade’ lights up skies as Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn form alignment after 1,000 years

Skygazers ought to prepare for a deal with this week as they’re all set to seize an exceptionally uncommon phenomenon. In response to an official of Bhubaneswar’s Pathani Samanta Planetarium, in a uncommon and distinctive astronomical occasion, the brightest planets – Venus and Jupiter, can be seen very shut collectively on April 30. Venus can be 0.2 levels south of Jupiter.

In the meantime, earlier than the dawn of April 26 and April 27, 4 planets — together with Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, have been seen inside 30 levels from the jap horizon in a near-perfect straight line. One might additionally see Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn in a line with out the necessity for binoculars or telescopes. The official mentioned the phenomenon lit up the sky for almost an hour.

Commenting on the photo voltaic occasion, Subhendu Pattnaik, Deputy Director, Pathani Samanta Planetarium mentioned such a phenomenon was captured after 1,000 years. 

Popularly generally known as the ‘planet parade’, the prevalence denotes an occasion whereby planets of the photo voltaic system line up in a row in the identical space of the sky.

Explaining the three most typical kinds of ‘planet parade’, Pattnaik mentioned when planets line up on one facet of the Solar, it’s termed the primary type of planet parade. The alignment of three planets on one facet of the Solar is quite common and might be seen for a lot of days in a yr.

Equally, an alignment of 4 planets happens annually, whereas that of 5 planets happens as soon as each nineteen years. 

The alignment of all eight planets happens as soon as in about 170 years.

“Secondly, when some planets seem in a small sector of the sky on the similar time, no matter their visibility circumstances, from Earth’s perspective we time period the occasion additionally as a planet parade. A planet parade of this sort final occurred on April 18, 2002 and July 2020, when all planets of the photo voltaic system had lined up in a row within the night sky,” mentioned Pattnaik.

He mentioned the third kind of planet parade is on uncommon events the place there are beneficial circumstances for commentary of all or a few of the planets. Three planets might be concurrently noticed in the identical a part of the sky a number of instances a yr.

“Over the past week of April 2022, a uncommon and distinctive planet parade will happen when Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will line up within the jap sky round one hour earlier than dawn. This can be a planet parade of the third form as described above. The final such parade of those planets occurred in 947 AD round 1,000 years in the past,” Pattnaik mentioned.

(With inputs from ANI)

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