Alignment of SEVEN Planets

A very rare treat is about to grace Earth's night skies.

On the evening of 28 February 2025, all seven of the other planets in the Solar System will appear in the night sky at the same time, with Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars all lining up in a neat row – a magnificent sky feast for the eyes known as a great planetary alignment.

But that's not all. Between now and then, on 21 January 2025, six of the seven other planets will appear in the sky at once in a large alignment – Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus, and Saturn, with the exception of Mercury.

An illustration of the upcoming January planetary alignment as seen from the Northern Hemisphere. (Star Walk)

Actually, it's not uncommon for a few planets to be on the same side of the Sun at the same time, but it's less common for most, or even all of the planets to align.

Any number of planets from three to eight constitutes an alignment. Five or six planets assembling is known as a large alignment, with five-planet alignments significantly more frequent than six.

Seven-planet great alignments are, of course, the rarest of all.     READ MORE...

Jupiterian Lightening

Scientists have recorded lightning on Jupiter in radio observations. Recently, however, a historic event occurred when the Juno space probe took the first-ever photograph of a Jupiterian lightning bolt.

Here's What We Know

A NASA freelancer accidentally discovered the lightning photo in the raw data collected by the spacecraft. The image was taken on December 30, 2020, when the probe flew close to the gas giant's north pole for the 31st time.

The lucky recipient of the photo is Kevin M. Gill. In 2022, he completed processing the data from the JunoCam. It is known that the picture was taken from an altitude of about 32,000 km.

In the near future, scientists will be able to get more photos of Jupiterian thunderstorms. This is because the spacecraft will regularly fly over the night side of the planet for several months.

Source: ScienceDaily

A Change in Jupiter's Orbit

A shift in Jupiter's orbit could make Earth's surface even more hospitable to life than it already is, new research suggests.

University of California-Riverside (UCR) scientists simulated alternative arrangements of our solar system, finding that when Jupiter's orbit was more flattened  —  or 'eccentric'  —  it would cause major changes in our planet's orbit too.

And this change caused by the orbit of Jupiter  —  the solar system's most massive planet by far  —  could impact Earth's ability to support life for the better.  READ MORE...