The Celestial Spectacle: Planetary Alignment on January 25th ?

 

On January 25^th people from all around the world witnessed an astronomical phenomenon: a rare planetary alignment in which all the planets in our solar system lined up in the same general plane. A planetary alignment is when planets in our solar system appear to form a straight or nearly straight from Earth’s perspective. This is true but this alignment is not perfect due to the tilted orbits of our planets, in fact it cannot be called an alignment because planets do not align. What the social media means by “alignment” can be more specified by the word “visible”, all the planets in our solar system will be visible on 25^th of January.

Imagine, all planets as runners in a big round track field, each runner runs in different speeds and a slightly tilted tracks compared to others. Because of this, they can never come in a straight line or align but sometimes they might come close to be seen in a straight line.