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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."

2 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. "Not likely?" by notsoclever · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd say it's pretty much certain that we won't see that configuration again until 2036, unless Jupiter is knocked out of orbit or something...

    --
    There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
  2. Stellarium for finding them by isn't+my+name · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And if you need help identifying which is which, or exactly where they are, Stellarium is a great GPL'd product available for Linux, Win and Mac.

    Sourceforge page