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Four planets of the Solar System were seen from Singapore aligned in a neat line on Tuesday, April 19, 2022.
Photos of the phenomenon of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Saturn lined up were put up online in the CloudSpotting & SkySpotting Singapore Facebook group and other astronomy pages.
Visible since March 2022
According to the Stargazing Singapore Facebook page, Mars, Venus and Saturn started to appear in the sky over Singapore from late March 2022, with Jupiter showing up from April.
via Haihong Zhang
The position of the planets in the sky on April 19 appeared in this particular alignment as seen from Singapore:
More prominent towards late April
The Astronomical Society of Singapore previously shared photos of the four planets taken on April 13 and 16.
April 13
April 16
April 23: Moon joins in
On April 23, the four planets will be joined by the moon.
Phenomenon explained
The neat alignment of the planets occurs when seen in Earth's skies.
Viewed from a different location in space, the position of each planet would be completely different.
The solar system is effectively flat, with each planet orbiting the Sun within the same plane.
Any alignment is just a matter of perspective, depending on the observer's location.
More splendid alignment in June 2022
An even more splendid planetary alignment event is set to take place in June 2022.
On June 24 and 25, all of the other planets of the solar system, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, will join together with the crescent moon to form an even grander planetary alignment.
A pair of binoculars or a telescope will be needed to see Neptune and Uranus from Singapore though.
The alignment will stretch out over a greater section of the sky, making it harder to notice and photograph.
Major planetary alignments visible to the human eye such as this event, are very, very rare, and have only occurred three times since 2005.
Top photo via Time and Date & Jeffrey Lim