Eyes rolling Saturday evening January 25 to observe the spectacle ofplanetary alignment: around 7:30 p.m. the planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus of the solar system will all be visible to the naked eye at the same time in a “parade of planets” around the southern direction, arranging themselves along a curved line in the sky. The two most distant planets, Uranus and Neptune, will also be present in the sky, but they will only be visible with instruments like binoculars or small telescopes but not with the naked eye. It will therefore ultimately be an alignment of GOOD 6 planetsbut let’s say right away that this astronomical phenomenon has no “particular” meaning from a scientific point of view and, in fact, talking about “alignment” is a little imprecise.
What will we see during the planetary alignment on January 25 and what is this phenomenon
In astronomy, a planetary alignment this is the situation in which at least three planets of the solar system are visible in the sky at the same time. This means that the planets involved in the phenomenon are on the same side of the Sun as us, so they all come into the field of view of the part of the Earth where it is dark (in fact, they would not be visible during the night ). day).
What we will see in the sky will therefore be the four planets observable with the naked eye: in order from east to west we will therefore have Mars, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn at the positions indicated by this celestial map.
As you can see, the planets they won’t actually be arranged in a straight line but they will follow a slightly curved line. This is completely normal: the same thing also happened during the planetary alignment in June 2024. This happens, among other things, because the planets do not rotate in exactly the same plane but have orbital planes slightly inclined relative to each other (up to a few degrees), enough for someone to appear “higher” and someone “lower” to us when aligned.
-Why it is imprecise to speak of “alignment”
Unlike solar eclipses and lunar eclipses, where our planet is actually aligned with the Sun and Moon, in a planetary alignment. the planets are not really on the same line: they only seem so from our point of view. It’s the same thing that happens with certain constellations or asterisms: the three stars of what we call “Orion’s Belt”for example, are not really aligned in space but simply appear that way in the two-dimensional sky.
Regardless, even the concept of “alignment” itself is not particularly special because in fact all the planets in the solar system, including Earth, revolve around the Sun. environ at the same level (with small variations, as we said above), says plane of the ecliptic (i.e. the imaginary line which corresponds to the projection of the Earth’s orbital plane on the celestial vault). So in fact it almost always happens that the planets follow a certain line: it’s just difficult to have enough of them visible in the sky to be able to notice it!
