Five Planets Take Center Stage as They Align in the Night Sky (cnn.com) 31
A rare, five-planet alignment will peak on June 24, allowing a spectacular viewing of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn as they line up in planetary order. From a report: The event began at the beginning of June and has continued to get brighter and easier to see as the month has progressed, according to Diana Hannikainen, observing editor of Sky & Telescope. A waning crescent moon will be joining the party between Venus and Mars on Friday, adding another celestial object to the lineup. The moon will represent the Earth's relative position in the alignment, meaning this is where our planet will appear in the planetary order. This rare phenomenon has not occurred since December 2004, and this year, the distance between Mercury and Saturn will be smaller, according to Sky & Telescope.
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List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events [wikipedia.org] Add it to the list, I am sure you'll be right eventually!
Or maybe the alignment does not actually mean anything except from our specific point of view and we just like to put importance on things that we can see. The earth, the planets, the universe as a whole does not perceive us, much less care about us.
We have human problems with human solutions. Looking to the greater universe for answers or destruction will always come up empty.
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A 5-planet alignment happens every 18 years. And planetary alignments are controlled by physics, not events on Earth.
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They weren't kings. At best they were wise men akin to astologers [jw.org]. The bible doesn't use the word king, either. It uses the word magi [biblegateway.com].
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And also the decrease in the number of pirates.
Six, not five (Score:3)
Uranus is also visible in the same area. Not visible with the naked eye.
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Well, 7. Mercury, Venus, Uranus, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn. 8, if you count Pluto.
Planets in "alignment" out of order doesn't sound as good, though.
*In the Northern Hemisphere. (Score:1)
I know the southern hemisphere is filled with savages and criminals, and so they're of no consequence to anything, but.. Which hemisphere is kind of important..
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Most of the southern hemisphere can see them just fine. South Africa, Australia,... no problem. At the southern tip of South America they'll be pretty close to the horizon but even there you can still see them.
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It's people in the north who will have more trouble. With Stellarium one can see and at 50N (e.g. London) it's difficult to see and starting 60N (e.g. Stockholm) it becomes impossible. Planets are low on the horizon and nights are the shortest at the moment. It's best observed on the equator (planets align "vertically") and in the south, e.g. Ushuaia (southernmost city, Argentina) it is visible during the 40 minutes preceding sunrise.
Plan 9 from (Score:2)
5 planets aligned
Like the Karrashian sisters arm in arm facing away from the pappparazzi.
Ironically, both types of planets are mostly silicon.
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you're right, it was the 2nd of June.
Haha idiots (Score:2)
Planets ALWAYS align, because they all lie in the plane of the ecliptic. The only issue is how close to each other they appear in the sky.
inaccurate title (Score:2)
Any perceptible gravitational effects? (Score:2)
I wonder if there are any perceptible gravitational effects on planet Earth or those planets are just too far away for us to notice anything here?
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What matters to moving orbits around is to have repeated relatively-close approaches between bodies. Which is why there are gaps in the rings of Saturn (at small number multiples of the orbits of various satellites, such as 3:4 orbits of Mimas, or 2:5 orbits of Iapetus) and gaps in the asteroid belt (the Kirkwood gaps [wikipedia.org]) at small-num
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What matters to moving orbits around is to have repeated relatively-close approaches between bodies.
I wasn't talking about "moving orbits around".
Let's me re-phrase my question with an example.
Let's pretend we have a record high tide somewhere on the planet because of the positions of the Moon aligning with the Sun to cause said event. How much higher would the tide have been if those planets also aligned with the Sun and the Moon?
I would think it could be measurable, by how much would it be higher is what I don't know.
Of course, like for the high tides caused by the Sun and the Moon, those alignment are
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I found this link, enough for tonight I guess. Order of magnitude of the effect is around 10^4 apparently for Venus only. Might still be measurable with today's technology since some places are natural amplifiers for tides, like in the the Bay of Fundy.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/p... [sciencefocus.com]
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Because I have done the calculation before, I think it'll be m. That's the effect for Venus, compared to several m for typical tides from the Moon. I don't think you're going to see that against the noise of waves. As a tide in a stilling well ... you'd get a better signal-noise ratio, but between lunar tide and thermal (and seismic) noise, still very optimistic.
And increasingly optimistic for each planet further. Mars can get to the same range as Venus, just ; but it's a 10th
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10^-4 ... AU? km? m? microns?
I was referring to the article I quoted which pretty much answered my original question. Sometimes you have to do the work yourself and search by yourself to find answers to your questions even if they are quite simplistic and giving and order of magnitude is sufficient to provide a valid and clear answer. :) Thanks for trying to help anyway.
Also, I am not completely stupid thus I am perfectly aware that if, for example, Mercury aligns with Saturn, Saturn has to be on the other side of the Sun (or at least
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We've been complaining about the poor non-ASCII character support around here since over a million accounts before yours. It's a tradition. But there are ASCII ways of represen
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Hmmm, that'll give me something to think about this afternoon.
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Hey rockdoctor, I am the guy who was telling you that spinning chains involve a lot of dangers but very few cut fingers. I spun a chain at least 50,000 times without encountering any problems, especially with regards to cutting any fingers although I understand that as a geologist, you might not have spun a single one thus you were talking according to urban legends. I also read all accident reports from all Canadian oil rigs when I was working there and I never read a single one mentioning cut fingers with
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A decade or so ago I started collecting astronomical data into a spreadsheet (and geological data into a different spreadsheet, and electronics data into a third). Nothi
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Thanks for your reply! I thought that you had written or that you were using a piece of software dedicated to modeling the system! :)
Thanks again!
P.S. Back in the days, we didn't have Internet on the rigs :)
OMG (Score:2)
OMG it's going to hit us OMG OMG O M G!