Four planets line up for celestial event today; This is how you spot them

Four planets – Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Saturn – will align in a straight line forming a planetary quartet in the sky in a rare celestial event starting from today (17 April),

They will be in full alignment by 20 April and 23 April. 

Besides, the event will become even more spectacular with the moon joining the party.

People from all around the world will be able to experience this phenomenon with the naked eye and more clearly with a pair of binoculars.

To see the planetary quartet, skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere should head outside about an hour before the sun comes up and gaze southeast, in the direction of the sunrise.

Looking east at a flat horizon, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn will appear "strung out in a line across the morning sky," NBC News cited NASA in a recent report. 

If conditions are clear, all four planets will be bright enough to see with the naked eye, without the aid of binoculars or telescopes.

The same alignment is viewable before sunrise in the Southern Hemisphere.

In that region, the sun's path in the sky is at a steeper angle to the horizon, compared to in the Northern Hemisphere, which means the string of planets will unfurl higher above the sunrise point.

In both cases, Jupiter will be the second-brightest planet in the celestial gathering but will appear lowest on the horizon, which could make it tricky to spot. That will change as the month goes on, according to NASA.

Also, NASA, in its monthly roundup of skywatching tips, said, "Heading into the last week of April, Jupiter will be high enough above the horizon in the hour before sunrise to make it more easily observed."

Though this month's skywatching event makes it look like the planets form a neat line in space, it's actually just a matter of perspective. 

Each planet in the solar system circles the sun on the same flat plane, which means that as they occasionally swing past each other in their orbits, they appear to form a straight line in Earth's skies. 

This tidy positioning, however, would look very different from any other vantage point in space.

The planets will be viewable in the predawn sky all month, and April's alignment will set the stage for an even more spectacular skywatching event this summer.

Besides, from late June to early July, five planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – will be visible in the sky before sunrise in a major alignment that only occurs every few years.