by Randy Muller
On Friday evening, April 19, my wife and I viewed the cluster of 5 planets in the west from our west-facing front driveway in Roseville, California. Together with the moon, it was quite a sight, and I don't think I've ever seen 5 together in the sky like that before. Four planets? Yes, on several occasions.
I had been jabbering about it quite a bit at home, and it has even been on the news. Every time they call it an "alignment", I point out in my delightfully pedantic way that the planets are always aligned, because they are always relatively near the ecliptic, which is a line. They're just not always near each other.
My wife suddenly decided she wanted to see it for herself, so we waited for it to get dark enough, and then went outside to have a look.
It was deep twilight, and Jupiter and Venus were very bright and easy to see. The nearly first quarter moon was just east of Jupiter. Saturn was difficult to pick out because it was so light, but eventually it became obvious.
More difficult was Mars. At first I thought Mars had moved really fast since the last time I had seen it on April 6, and was now near Saturn. But it was too bright, and I realized I was looking at ruddy Aldebaran.
Presently I could see a much fainter (but still fairly bright) orange spot about halfway between Venus and Saturn.
Four down, one to go.
The four planets were in a line (as they must be), so I continued this imaginary line (also known, approximately, as the plane of the earth's orbit, the ecliptic and the plane of the solar system) west, and studied the area.
Mercury greeted my eyes after some study. It rivaled Mars in brightness.
I pointed out each of the planets to my wife as I was seeing them. Our neighbors on both sides of our house saw us looking up at the sky and wondered what we were looking at.
We pointed out the planets to them as well. The older couple next door were pretty interested and excited about seeing them.