The Four Planet Dance of 2011: What Happened?

Spaceweather.com gives us a good view of pictures to show what happened that golden eve of May 11. On May 9, Mariano Ribas, native to Buenos Aires, Argentina,  photographed the gathering from his home. Ribas said:

"It was an awesome morning with an unforgettable view: four planets packed in just a 7º piece of sky. The very compact Venus-Mercury-Jupiter triangle was simply hypnotic. And Mars, below them, was faint but still clearly visible to naked eye. Marvelous planetary gathering, but the best is yet to come." [His picture is below]

Being one of my personal favorites, shot by Danny Ratcliffe of Deception Bay, Queensland, Australia: this is what we see. He writes:

"Dawn planets still continue to shine through the morning twilight here at Deception Bay. It was captivating to see 3 of the planets lined up to the sunrise over Moreton Island QLD..."

From Alan Dyer, (near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile), he writes:

Here's a shot of the current four-planet conjunction, taken the morning of May 7, 2011 from 23° south near San Pedro de Atacama and the ALMA telescope site in central Chile. This scene shows four planets partaking in a rare close mutual conjunction in the morning sky. From top to bottom they are: Venus (brightest) with Mercury just to the right of Venus (both inner worlds appear close together for the next week or so), then below that pair, Jupiter, then at the bottom and faintest, Mars. Notice how Venus, Jupiter and Mars are almost equally spaced, forming a straight line that defines the ecliptic path of the planets, here seen coming up vertically from the horizon. This is the view from 23° south latitude; from North America these planets would be arrayed more horizontally low across the eastern horizon. The conical peak at left is 5,900-metre-high Licancabur Volcano. The lights are taillights of pre-dawn traffic going over the high pass over the Andes into Bolivia.

Here's another photo taken from Turkey.

Photographed by Jefferson Teng on the shore of Lampung Bay in Indonesia, here are the planets as he sees them. He says:

"I had no trouble seeing this rare and beautiful conjunction despite the glaring lights of the Port of Panjang below. Venus and Jupiter were that bright."

If you would like to view more extremely beautiful photos, come to this page and click on the links underneath the picture above.