this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Aren’t they always on the plane of the elliptic though?
Yeah but you can't always see them all together.
How is that an alignment though? It’s not like MacGuyver or Lara Croft is going to have to stop some baddies from assembling ancient artefacts in a particular room to unleash arcane terrors into the world just because the planets are sort-of visible together in the sky.
It's an alignment because if you look up at it they're in a line. That's what alignment means, Lara Croft and ancient artifacts are optional.
The cool alignment is when they're in alignment all pointed straight at the earth, so you can't really see them all spaced out like this one.
It's a known fiction plot because while the planets do come somewhat close to lining up somewhat often (depending on how loose you want to define somewhat close, and if they also have to be all on one side of the sun), they never actually do. The planets have never actually all lined up perfectly and aren't likely to do so any time in the next 13 trillion years. A moot point since our sun will be burned out a thousand times over by then and the whole system will have fallen apart.
But only in the same sense that they always are! You just can’t see it because of your mortal limitations.
I think that actually was a plot in a MacGyver TV movie I vaguely remember from the 90s.
What is the reason, is it because sometimes some of them are on the other side from the sun?
They're in orbits at different distances from the sun and so take different times to complete an orbit. Also we're closer to the sun than most, so circling faster, and further than Venus and Mercury so circling slower, so sometimes some planets appear to be going the wrong way along the ecliptic
Some planets are in resonance with others (for example orbiting 3 times for the other's 4)
So sometimes other planets are on the other side of the sun, sometimes they're on this side of the sun but the opposite side of the sky