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Monday's Planet Views Best Until 2036

Posted by timothy on from the hey-we've-all-got-naked-eyes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "NASA is reporting that Monday night, March 22nd, offers a rare, naked-eye glimpse of our five prominent astronomical neighbors--Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and the Moon--in close proximity in the night sky, near to the familiar Orion constellation. This contrasts with the picture of the 'Fab Five' shot by Voyager looking back on the inner solar system. Monday's aligned view is not likely to appear in this configuration again until 2036."

3 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Not likely?" by notsoclever · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Well, I think that the amazingness of the view is because it's got five planetary-type bodies in view at once.

    I was just poking a little fun at how the original poster said it wasn't likely to happen again until 2036 since without any large amount of external force being applied to one of them, the probability of their orbits being affected beyond our current predictions of their orbital mechanics is effectively zero.

    --
    There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
  2. Grammar: No such thing as "close proximity" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Since the phrase "far proximity" makes no logical sense, then is not the phrase "near proximity" equally nonsense?

    Things are in proximity, or they are not.

  3. Re:Belt of Orion viewed from mars by Jerf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you could tell the difference between "Orion's Belt from Earth" and "Orion's Belt from Mars" on your computer screen, I'd like to buy your monitor. Because the difference is way, way, way, way, way, way , WAY below one pixel's size on your screen.

    You want to change the starfield to any degree, you need to travel lightyears, not a few piddly million miles.