Five planets will be visible in the night sky on Tuesday evening

Science
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Look up tomorrow! FIVE planets will be visible in the night sky Tuesday night – here’s how to see Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Mars

  • On Tuesday, stargazers may catch a glimpse of a planetary alignment
  • Five planets Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Mars will all line up in the night sky

By Lauren Haughey and Sam Tonkin for Mailonline

published: | Updated:

Stargazers tomorrow night will have a chance to see a rare planetary parade as five worlds line up in the night sky.

Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury and Uranus should all be visible shortly after sunset.

From the UK, Venus and Jupiter are expected to be the most obvious to see, while spotting dim Mercury, Uranus and Mars may be a bit more challenging.

Experts say escaping city life offers the best opportunity for a clearer picture, as urban areas are more affected by light pollution.

Professor Beth Biller, from the University of Edinburgh, told MailOnline: ‘The exact UK location is probably not crucial. It is more important to be outside the city and to be somewhere where you have a good view of the horizon.’

Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury and Uranus should all be visible shortly after sunset tomorrow

How to find good places to watch the stars

  1. Stay away from areas with a lot of light pollution, such as parking lots, sports complexes, street lights
  2. Being at a higher altitude helps, because you are above the dense low-altitude air that contains mists, fog, and smoke that mask your view of the stars
  3. Use a stargazing app to focus your gaze on the right part of the night sky
  4. Check the weather – even the best spots are sometimes too cloudy!

A planetary parade occurs when a number of worlds are in the same constellation.

While it is not uncommon to see two or three planets in the sky, an alignment of five is less common.

It happened last year, and in both 2020 and 2016 before that.

Professor Biller added: ‘Venus and Jupiter are both very bright and easy to distinguish, and you may have seen them close together in recent weeks.

‘Mars is slightly fainter, but still very visible to the naked eye. Mercury is starting to get tricky – you need to be in a dark place with a clear view of the horizon if you want to see Mercury.”

According to Sky & Telescope editor-in-chief Rick Fienberg, some planets can also be difficult to see from the US.

“Unless you have clear skies and a nearly flat western horizon with no obstructions like trees or buildings, you won’t see Jupiter and Mercury,” he told FOX 35.

While specialist equipment may be needed to spot Uranus, Mr. Fienberg that the five planets should be visible with binoculars.

However, skywatchers needn't worry if they miss the spectacle - a number of other planetary alignments will occur this year (stock image)

However, skywatchers needn’t worry if they miss the spectacle – a number of other planetary alignments will occur this year (stock image)

However, skywatchers need not worry if they miss the spectacle – a number of other planetary alignments will take place this year.

Less than a month later, Mercury, Uranus, Venus and Mars are expected to realign in a 35 degree celestial sector.

Then on April 24, a 40-degree sector occurs where Mars, Venus, Uranus, and Mercury converge.

Last year, stargazers in the Northern Hemisphere had the amazing opportunity to stare at Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn at the same time.

To easily identify this month’s planets, the educational astronomy application Star Walk recommends using the Sky Tonight app, which can be pointed at the night sky to provide a live view of what’s going on.

The planets are expected to align in a 50-degree sector of the sky, meaning they appear closer together in a small area above from Earth.

This visual phenomenon differs from an astronomical alignment, which refers to the simultaneous convergence of planets on the same side of the sun.

DOES PLANET ALIGNMENT HAVE AN EFFECT ON EARTH?

The planets in our solar system are never in one perfectly straight line as they show in the movies.

If you look at a two-dimensional chart of the planets and their orbits on a piece of paper, you might think that all the planets will eventually orbit around the same line.

In reality, the planets do not all orbit perfectly in the same plane. Instead, they swing around in different orbits in three-dimensional space. For this reason, they will never be perfectly aligned.

Planetary alignment depends on your point of view. If three planets are in the same region of the sky from Earth’s point of view, they don’t necessarily have to be in the same region of the sky from the Sun’s point of view.

Alignment is therefore an artifact of a point of view and not something fundamental about the planets themselves.

Even if the planets were all aligned in a perfectly straight line, it would have negligible effects on Earth.

Fictional and pseudoscientific authors like to argue that a planetary alignment would mean adding up all the planets’ gravitational fields to make something huge that disrupts life on Earth.

In reality, the gravitational pull of the planets on Earth is so weak that they have no significant effect on life on Earth.

There are only two objects in the solar system with enough gravity to significantly affect the Earth: the moon and the sun.

The sun’s gravity is strong because the sun is so massive. The gravitational effect of the Moon on Earth is strong because the Moon is so close.

The Sun’s gravity causes the Earth’s annual orbit and therefore, when combined with the Earth’s tilt, causes the seasons.

The moon’s gravity is primarily responsible for the daily ocean tides. The near alignment of the sun and moon has an effect on the Earth because their gravitational fields are so strong.

This partial alignment occurs every full moon and new moon and leads to extra strong tides called “spring tides.”

The word ‘spring’ here refers to the fact that the water seems to spring up the shore every two weeks with the extra strong tides – not that they only occur in the spring season.

Source: dr. Christopher S. Baird/West Texas A&M University

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