I’ve gone out to see the planets a couple of times this week. What’s most amazing for me is that this alignment of planets makes it easy to visualize the plane

I’ve gone out to see the planets a couple of times this week. What’s most amazing for me is that this alignment of planets makes it easy to visualize the plane of the ecliptic [1]. Ordinarily, when we look up at the night sky we see stars and planets seemingly scattered about at random. Now seeing all the planets along an arc helped me recall and visualize this plane extending out from the sun which all of the planets travel along. We might then imagine looking down on the solar system from above and seeing all the planets in their orbital paths. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic