Have all the planets in our solar system ever aligned?

Question

Or at least the most ever to align and which ones were they. Doesn't have to be in anyone's lifetime.

Answer 1

There was a relatively rare planetary alignemnt in the 1980's where all the planets were within relatively narrow a 17 (?) degree arc.

NASA took advantage of this alignment to launch the pioneer and voyager space craft. it allowed each probe to use the gravity of Jupiter to "toss" each probe to the next planet in the line and therefore get the best possible speed to cover the vast distances as quickly as possible.

Several planets may line up closely (say within a 10 degree arc) several times over a period of hundreds of years.

Alignments of two or three are relatively common.

but if they all lined up perfectly (impossible), it would have zero bearing on Earth.

No gravity shocks, no riots or astrological phenomenon.

Answer 2

pussiologist is right, there have been numerous alignments already, it's just a matter of how many planets are aligned at once. But their total gravitational pull is no where near that of the sun. Though gravity is a powerful force when huge masses are invovled it's actually the weakest of all natural forces. Add to that the fact that it decays exponentially and you'll find out that the mass of the sun is phenominal in relation to the rest of the Solar System, and it has to be this way in order to keep the planets as we know them in orbit. The only real noticable effect that occurs on earth when certain heavenly bodies line up (mostly jus tthe sun and moon) is the height of the tide. Since water moves freely it is much more sensitive to extrenal gravity from the moon and such.

Answer 3

As others have observed, no it may not--not interior the existence of the image voltaic equipment. And for the respond that asserts it is going to and that folk who say in any different case are making "extraordinary hypothetical statements"--the declare that we are going to see an "alignment" that happens "each and every 28,six hundred years" is unquestionably the unusual one. you need to use a software that calculates the positions of planets, set it for 12/21/2012, and you will see that to get all 8 planets, you will need an perspective of one hundred sixty ranges, it quite is largely all the sky you're able to desire to make certain at all people time. some alignment--all the planets are interior the comparable _half_ of the sky. till that answerer is now going to declare that sometime interior the subsequent year the planets will now not observe the regulations of planetary action. yet that doesn't be a "extraordinary hypothetical fact" in any respect.

Answer 4

I don't know about Pluto, but the moon, sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were in alignment on Friday, 5 May 2000 at 08:08 UT.

It won't happen again until the year 2438.

But there's nothing to worry about.

Planetary alignments do not cause global disasters of any kind nor can they.

Here's some interesting info:
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/05/02/planetary.alignment

Answer 5

Yes they have aligned, but it is a common misconception that if you looked at them straight on, they would all be aligned in all 3 dimensions.

Each planet has a different tilt to its orbit, so on paper they would look aligned, but from a 3-D view they would still be "lower" or "higher" than each other.

Answer 6

the answer is yes it happens on a regular basis. it happened just a few years ago and the doom-sayers were afraid that combined gravitaional pull of the sun its way and the planets the other way would destroy earth. the pull from the planets is not even close to the pull of the sun.

Answer 7

There is a special term for it but I can't remember it. It happens when all of the planets are in a straight line.