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Wed 23 Nov, 2005 10:06 am
Guys, I have a very important question. Ok i'm working on my science project and this may be a really stupid question, but I need to know when the planets allign. Or any kind of formula or whatever that would lead me to this answer. Please please please help me!!! Thank u lotz!!
I doubt there's a formula. It's too complicated. There is probably a table of future alignments.
Do you mean when they align as viewed from the sun or as viewed from Earth? If it is the former, you could use their times for one complete revolution around the sun to calculate this, but it is a lot of work for a pretty small payoff. You would also need to define "align". Does that mean exactly or within a 5 degree angle, etc?
engineer wrote:Do you mean when they align as viewed from the sun or as viewed from Earth? If it is the former, you could use their times for one complete revolution around the sun to calculate this, but it is a lot of work for a pretty small payoff. You would also need to define "align". Does that mean exactly or within a 5 degree angle, etc?
I guess I assumed he meant an alignment of all of the planets at once, or at least more than two. Knowing the periods isn't sufficient to calculate this analytically.
Check out: Planets Alignments: Fact or Fiction?
The odds strongly favor that an exact planetary alignment will NEVER occur .
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