Notice to early risers, and even night owls: you can observe a rare astronomical configuration at dawn on Sunday. A total of four planets – Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn – will be aligned from Earth.
What is this perspective effect due to? Eric Lagadec, the president of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics, explains on Twitter that the four stars are currently “on the same side of the Sun seen from Earth”. Reason why “we see them in the same direction”.
To take advantage of this event, there is no need to take out your telescope. All you have to do is look east-southeast at the right time and in the right place. The French Association of Astronomy advises on son site to position yourself on “a clear observation site”, preferably by the sea or at a mountainous or urban high point. Luckily, the weather is looking good.
A multi-day show
Saturn will be the first planet to rise around 5am. It will be joined less than half an hour later by Mars, characterized by its orange hue. Then comes Venus around 5:40 a.m. Impossible not to recognize the evening star, which is distinguished by its brilliance. Finally, Jupiter and its rings will appear around 6 a.m., when the sky will have already started to clear.
If you were planning to sleep in this Easter weekend, don’t panic: the phenomenon will last for several days. Little by little, this configuration in single file will be deformed as the planets move away from or approach the Sun.
From April 23, the Moon will even join the planetary procession, and this for a week. The show will resume on June 24, with what is called a “parade of planets”: all the planets of the solar system will be aligned from east to south. But not all the stars will be visible to the naked eye. It will be necessary to be equipped with a telescope or astronomical glasses to be able to distinguish Neptune and Uranus.