Are all the planets going to line up with the Sun sometime soon?

Question

If so, does it have any meaning? Is this normal, even if only occurring once in a long while?

Answer 1

The planets around the sun are always "lined up" with the sun. It just depends on your point of view. The planets go around the sun in the plane of the ecliptic (except Pluto, which is no longer a planet, of course :). So, if you were outside the solar system looking back on it from within the plane of the ecliptic, the planets and sun would always make a more or less straight line.

Here's a photo I took when "the planets aligned" a few years ago:

http://www.californiastars.net/gallery/s...

Place your mouse pointer over the image to see some labels.

There is no meaning to the alignment. It's simply a happy coincidence of physics, geometry, and point of view.

Enjoy.

Answer 2

Someone has calculated that it should happen once every 8.6 x 10^46 years. So you could take that as a 'no'.

http://www.etsu.edu/physics/etsuobs/star...

Answer 3

Hi Anthony!

The answer is yes, but perhaps not in the hyped-up way you've been hearing.  I think what you mean is this:

It's not a case of the planets literally "lining up" in the sky, with a military-like precision formation.  

Rather, all the planets are in the evening sky this month (August 2008).  

Sometimes a planet can be seen in the morning sky, that is, before the sun comes up, and sometimes in the evening sky after the sun sets.  By coincidence, all five of the naked-eye planets will be in the evening sky in August 2008.

There's nothing especially remarkable about such a coincidence, and it certainly does not foreshadow anything significant (except perhaps in the minds of astrologers, and they make up their horoscopes as they go along anyway).  If you calculate the probability, the chances come out at one in 16 that all five planets will be on the same side of the sun, unusual, but not any more than that.

The last time I saw all five together in the sky at one time was May 2002, and they were a lot closer together in the sky than this month.  In August 2008, Jupiter is the odd man out, straying over into the southeastern sky at sunset while the other four have taken their places along the western horizon.

By the way, if you're in the north temperate zone like I am (the New York area) you'll likely only see two of those planets with the naked eye.  Jupiter is on display in the southern sky, the brightest object except for the moon in our evening skies.  You can see Venus about a half-hour after sunset low in the western sky, but it's not easy to find against the bright twilight and ground haze.

Mercury, Mars and Saturn are there, close to Venus, but since they're a lot dimmer than Venus I couldn't spot them this month.  In the Southern Hemisphere, you could easily see all five this month, however.

Answer 4

STUNNING, Daniel!.. thanks for sharing that!!!

Answer 5

No, and it would no meaning, any more than the alignment of tea leaves at the bottom of your cup when you're done have any meaning.

Answer 6

No.  Months ago someone on this site showed a calculation of when the next closest possible alignment would happen and it will be long after the Sun dies out.  Tens if not hundreds of trillions of years in the future.  

Rough alignments too are very rare.  Even to get several of the planets lined up, more or less, takes hundreds of thousands of years between events.  

The main reason for this is that the plane of the orbit of each of the planets in the solar system is slightly different. The second reason is that the outer plants orbit very slowly, particularly those past Jupiter.  

The gravitational effect of the outer planets on Earth is negligible.  Even that of Jupiter, which is the closest of the big ones is very small.  Like wise, the gravitational effect of Venus, which is closest, is quite small.  It's been estimated that when Venus is closest to Earth, which it is roughly 5 times in 8 years, the tides in the Earth's oceans rise by an extra half millimetre.  

The reason for that is that the gravitational effect is due to the product of the masses divided by the SQUARE of the distance between them, all multiplied by a very small number. You could add all the gravitational effects together and still not have a hill of beans.