Look up: Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus to Align with the Moon this Friday

Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus have aligned in the evening sky and will remain major fixtures in the evening sky for the rest of December, but the trio will be joined by a newcomer this week.

The eight primary planets of the Solar System can never come into perfect alignment due to the orientation and inclination of their orbits. They didn't appear in the same section of the sky in almost 1,000 years, in the year AD 949, and they won't do so again until May 6, 2492.

Fortunately, the brightest planets take up places in the night sky around every half century or so, giving the sense of being in a straight line. The last good show occurred in April 2002, when Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Mercury were strung like a cosmic necklace above the western horizon, with a crescent moon at its center. A similar alignment will occur in 30 years, on September 8, 2040.

Implications

If you're concerned about the gravitational implications of such an alignment, don't be: the additional pull on the Earth is insignificant. However, some alignments are beneficial. NASA used a unique arrangement of the planets in the 1970s to send space probes on a 'grand tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune with little effort. Only once every 175 years can such an alignment occur. Fortunately, it arrived just as NASA scientists figured out how to utilize it.

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