The not-so-lonely planets: Venus, Jupiter, Mercury and Mars come together for once-in-a-generation early morning sky view

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 12:02 PM on 13th May 2011 

Dailymail

Until now, Venus lit up the morning sky in solitary splendour.

But this week, the brightest planet, which appears an hour before sunrise, will be joined by its closest rival Jupiter, usually an evening fixture.

More incredibly yet, Mercury and Mars are visible in the vicinity in a rare temporary alliance low in the eastern sky. The astronomical phenomenon is unlikely to occur again before 2040. 

Our incredible photograph, taken over Sydney, Australia, was taken at dawn and shows the four planets in the midst of a month-long ‘summit meeting’.

The planets will all move position until, by May 31, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury will appear in one line with a thin crescent Moon forming a triangle with Mars and Venus.

Saturn, the only other planet visible to the naked eye, remains holding the fort in the evening sky.

The convergence is a phenomenon caused by the position of Earth and the way the planets circle the Sun with an individual routine.

As seen from here, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter are almost in the one line. Hence they appear close together in the sky.

Three of the planets alter their position a lot over the course of the period, but Jupiter will hardly move at all and so appears furthest from the other three.

If you have a camera in which you can slow down the shutter speed, it may be possible to capture this movement over the coming days.

Yesterday, MailOnline revealed why giant planets in other solar systems mysteriously spin in the opposite direction of the stars they orbit.

According to scientists, this contra-rotation, the effect may be due to gravitational coupling between two planets as they near each other.

This leads to the planet nearest its sun, over time, having its orbit flipped as it is hauled much closer to the star.

These strange, backward-spinning planets are usually gassy giants called hot Jupiters, not rocky orbs like Earth.

Besides their backwards twirling, which the astronomers call flipped orbits, these big planets huddle close to their stars, unlike Jupiter, which is about 483 million miles from the Sun, more than five times as distant from the Sun as Earth.

‘That’s really weird, and it’s even weirder because the planet is so close to the star,’ Frederic Rasio of Northwestern University said.