APOD: 2022 June 17 - Good Morning Planets from Chile

Good Red Friday evening, Rallypoint, and welcome to the June 17th edition of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "Good Morning Planets from Chilé." In astronomy, a syzygy is a (roughly) straight line configuration of three or more celestial bodies in a gravitational system. So perhaps we should call this a visual (vs an actual) syzygy, for we only see what appears to be a straight line arrangement of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the early pre-dawn sky. But they are out there, and will be ready for the viewing for the rest of the month. This week's alignment will be quite "tight," with the five worlds appearing to stretch across an arc only about halfway across the sky from east-northeast to almost due south roughly about a half hour before sunrise. The last time we had a display like this was in 2004. So if the weather is clear and you're up early, be sure to go take a look.