Three planets will be visible in the pre-dawn sky

The Moon will be aligned with the glittering Venus, which is also called by many “evening star” or “morning star”. It is highly unusual, however, when three or more bright planets plus the moon, appear to reside in the same small area of the sky. Something caused that planet to vanish, however, and new evidence is pointing to Jupiter being the culprit. Mars on the other hand will shine above our moon and Venus and the Red Planet is expected to shine with only 1/250 of the intensity of Venus.

Usually a wide variety of different conjunctions and configurations involving our own little satellite and planets usually occurs during the course of any given year. A gathering of three bright planets and a lovely fading crescent moon formed part of a celestial attraction in the predawn sky.

The additional planet hypothesis was first proposed back in 2011, but this recent study shows that there’s a real possibility that this could have actually happened. Each of these planets appears to move against the starry background at their own speeds and along their own tracks.

The trio Venus, Mars and the moon will be visible to crowd into a relatively tiny spot in the sky, on Saturday.

Technically, the ecliptic represents the extension or projection of the plane of the Earth’s orbit out towards the sky. In the new study, researchers took a look at the orbits of the two planet’s moons, looking for evidence that they could exist in their current trajectory after such a violent encounter.

Researchers stressed that if the mysterious planet collided with Saturn, the collision would be so intense that the orbits of Saturn’s moon Iapetus would have been differed from the original position, and would have been throuwn out as well. This ability to move, seemed to have an nearly magical, god-like quality.

Now there are four giant planets in our solar system, but scientists think there may have once been a fifth.

If you were up early Friday morning, you may have observed almost the same sky, except the moon was next to Jupiter, which is located a bit further north than the Mars and Venus conjunction. (To put things into perspective, your closed fist held out at arm’s length covers roughly 10 degrees of the night sky).