The planets will align this Tuesday

Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, together in the sky. “We call it a planetary alignment. It’s simply the fact that we can observe several planets during the same night. They will be aligned with the celestial vault, on an imaginary line called the ecliptic,” explains Jean-Michel Hirschi, president of the Mont-Soleil astronomical observatory foundation.

The first four will be observable with the naked eye. “To observe Uranus and Neptune, it will be much too small, you will need a small telescope,” advises the astronomer. The planets will be visible for a few days. The alignment will be clearest on January 21. “Venus and Saturn are already very close to sunset. In a few days, Mars will not yet have risen and Venus and Saturn will already have set,” adds Jean-Michel Hirschi.

This phenomenon is uncommon because of the difference in speed with which the planets orbit the sun. If the Earth takes a year to go around, it takes Venus 220 days, Uranus 84 years, or Neptune more than 160 years. It is therefore rare that they are visible all at the same time.

At the Mont-Soleil observatory, the event is not really one. “For us this is not an event worthy of being observed through a telescope. You have to see it with the naked eye. When we observe with the telescope, we see a surface smaller than the moon,” explains Jean-Michel Hirschi. Before concluding: “It’s something poetic, which we really have to observe as a whole. » /cgr