{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Radio Chatskill","title":"How to Spot the 'Parade' of All 7 Planets Across the Night Sky This Week","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":802,"description":"Sky gazers across the U.S. will have a chance to see an extraordinary celestial event on Friday as all of the planets in our solar system appear in the evening sky. This phenomenon, known as a “planet parade,” will feature Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all visible at the same time along a line or arc in the sky, NASA says. Though “planet parade” is not an official astronomical term, it typically refers to when four or more planets are seen together in the sky—a rare alignment that won’t happen again for decades.Dr. Jackie Faherty, curator in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History says, \"The misnomer on it is that it's an alignment…if you took your finger and you pointed it up and towards one of the planets, all of the planets would be in a line along that finger. And that's just not the case.”Instead, Faherty likens the planets’ motion to cars on a racetrack. “The Earth is on a side of the racetrack as it's going around the Sun that the other planets…are also on that side. So right now, if you go out, you have to do this right at sunset or else you're not going to catch the planets as they're setting. They're always there, but they are currently on the side of the race track that we're on.”Why This Planetary Parade Is SpecialWhile planetary parades are not unheard of, Faherty explains, “It happened a year and a half ago…it's just related to the orbital periods, the amount of time it takes any one of the planets to make its way around the Sun.” Mercury orbits in roughly 88 days, Venus in just over 200, Earth in 365, and Mars takes about twice that. Outer planets take even longer, which makes this simultaneous appearance a rare visual treat.\"This planetary parade just means that we are catching them on that planetary disk that they're going around on where it's dark at night where we can see a bunch of them,\" Dr. Faherty said.How to Spot the Planets Visible TonightNot all planets are visible to the...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/q7XXsnSXT_u4mZLCn3chUorwDmUD_kWiB272D6emB18/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80N2Uy/OGY5MWUwZThkYTEw/NDVkZGM2ZGZkZDIw/ZjliOS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}