SYZYGY FROM PAM IN ÀGER, WHEN SIX PLANETS ALIGN

Joseph de Ca'th Lon arrived in Barcelona yesterday to spend four days with The Grandma.

This afternoon, they have taken their telescopes and an Avant to Lleida where Claire Fontaine was waiting for them to organize their visit to Àger, where tonight they hope that the sky will be with them, there will not be many clouds and they can contemplate the syzygy or planetary alignment of six planets and the Moon, a spectacle that does not happen every day and that is always something fascinating to see and experience. Once they have arrived in Lleida, they have driven along the C12 to this beautiful town that hosts one of the best Astronomical Parks in the country.

Àger is a municipality of 637 population in the comarca of La Noguera in Catalunya. It is situated in the north-west of the comarca, and the territory of the municipality stretches between the Noguera Ribagorçana and Noguera Pallaresa rivers. The Terradets reservoir on the Noguera Pallaresa is situated within the municipality. The village is linked to Balaguer and Tremp by the L-904 road.

In astronomy, a syzygy (from Ancient Greek συζυγία (suzugía) union, yoking, expressing the sense of σύν (syn- together) and ζυγ- (zug- a yoke) is a roughly straight-line configuration of three or more celestial bodies in a gravitational system.

The word is often used in reference to the Sun, Earth, and either the Moon or a planet, where the latter is in conjunction or opposition. Solar and lunar eclipses occur at times of syzygy, as do transits and occultations.

A syzygy sometimes results in an occultation, transit, or an eclipse.

-An occultation occurs when an apparently larger body passes in front of an apparently smaller one, obscuring it from view.

-A transit occurs when a smaller body passes in front of a larger one.

-In the combined case where the smaller body regularly transits the larger, an occultation is also termed a secondary eclipse. It is commonly used to refer to cases where a planet travels behind its host star as viewed from Earth.

-An eclipse occurs when a body totally or partially disappears from view, either by an occultation, as with a solar eclipse, or by passing into the shadow of another body, as with a lunar eclipse.

The term is also used to describe situations when all the planets are on the same side of the Sun although they are not necessarily in a straight line, such as on March 10, 1982.

Apparent planetary alignment involving Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter; the Moon is also shown, as the brightest object.

Because the orbits of all the planets in the Solar System (as well as the Moon) are inclined by only a few degrees, they always appear very near the ecliptic in our sky. Therefore, although an apparent planetary alignment known as a planetary parade may appear as a line (actually, a great arc), the planets are not necessarily aligned in space.

More information: NASA

 Who are we? 
We find that we live on an insignificant planet 
of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away 
in some forgotten corner of a universe 
in which there are far more galaxies than people.

Carl Sagan