Look out for the planets aligning this week, a grand spectacle once believed a rare omen

Name: China to open world’s largest telescope to international experts to boost scientific credentials
Uploaded: 2022-04-28T22:00:12.000Z
Duration: 3 min 54 s
Description: China to open world’s largest telescope to international experts to boost scientific credentials

Cast your eyes east in the predawn sky to see Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn line up in a celestial event that in the past could sway a royal court

As Jupiter and Venus draw closer over the week, they will appear extremely close – almost kissing each other

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This week, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn will appear in a row to stargazers. Image: Shutterstock

Ling Xin

Published: 6:00am, 29 Apr 2022

This week, if you have the chance to get up early and look east into the predawn sky, you could easily spot four of our solar system’s planets in an almost perfectly straight line. Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn appear in a row from the lower left part to the right, upper part of the sky, with Venus the brightest of all.

In ancient China, if a royal astronomer saw four bright planets lining up closely in the sky, he would scramble to report to the emperor that warnings had been sent from above. “When four planets come together, a virtuous emperor will lead his country to prosper but an immoral emperor will be destroyed,” stated Jinzhou Astrology, a classic book purportedly compiled during the Han dynasty but later lost.

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China to open world’s largest telescope to international experts to boost scientific credentials

Such an astronomical phenomenon, special as it might seem, was neither unfavourable nor very rare, said Zhu Jin, an astronomer and former curator of Beijing Planetarium. Since all planets revolve around the sun in the same virtual plane, seeing them in a line simply meant they were on the same side of the sun from Earth’s vantage point, he said.

As Jupiter and Venus keep drawing closer over the week, they will appear extremely close – almost kissing each other – on Sunday between 4am and sunrise. The phenomenon, called the Venus-Jupiter conjunction, happens about once a year, but this time viewers in China will be especially well positioned to view it, he said.

Both planets will be very bright, with Venus appearing brighter on the lower right of the pair. The two will remain very close to each other for two days before appearing to head in separate directions.