Planets will not be visible through unaided eyes expect Venus: Experts

Hyderabad: Do not believe what is going viral on social media. No spectacular phenomena can be seen in the sky on Tuesday say experts.

Talking to Hans India, Raghunandan Kumar, Director, of the Planetary Society of India said social media has been agog saying that five planets including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus are going to be aligned in an arc form along with the moon after sunset and will be visible to the unaided eye. There is no truth in it. It is not rare astronomical event, the experts said.

According to them, Venus is already visible in the sky since December. On Tuesday from evening to midnight Mars will be visible near the moon in the sky but it will not be very clear and cannot be seen with naked eye.

Explaining the alignment of the five planets Raghunandan, In our Solar System, conjunctions frequently occur between planets because the planets orbit around the Sun in approximately the same plane – the ecliptic plane – and thus trace similar paths across our sky.

Such alignment happened last year as well. In fact Uranus is very dim and even with the help of the Telescope it will not be visible. Jupiter and Mercury are near the horizon, which is the reason it is rising and setting along with sun so these planets will not be seen. Meanwhile, Venus will be clearly visible, it will continue to be visible in the evening sky, as a non–twinkling bright object on the west side till August 2023.

Explaining about Mars likely to be visible on Tuesday, experts stated that an astronomical event known as conjunction would take place on Tuesday, bringing Mars and Moon into proximity to each other as seen from Earth. These two bright objects will be spotted after sunset till midnight but Mars will appear as a dim red object, it will not be visible with the naked eye," Raghunandan added.