The planets align

 New Science:


All the planets will appear to line up across the sky towards the end of February

alxpin/Getty Images

All of our solar system’s planets are lining up to parade through the night sky at once. This extraordinary celestial event will see the sky scattered with seven visible planets in what is known as a great planetary alignment.

The eight planets in our solar system orbit the sun in roughly the same plane, because they all originally formed from the same disc of debris around the sun. The line the sun traces across the daytime sky, called the ecliptic, aligns with this plane, so when the planets appear in the sky, they all appear roughly along the ecliptic. It isn’t a perfect line of planets, because their orbits are tilted slightly, but it is fairly close.

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The Earth is sometimes called the "third rock from the sun."  All but Uranous and Neptune should be available to be seen with the naked eye. 

 

 

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