Viral video of 5 planets aligned in rare celestial event is not real

Hyderabad: A video of a rare celestial event was shared by Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan on Instagram. It has gone viral on social media.

The much-awaited planetary alignment parade on 28 March 2023 was allegedly shot and shared by Mr. Bachchan and later by millions of his followers.

The rare phenomenon purportedly shows five planets—Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Uranus, and Mars—aligned together in the night sky.

Mr. Bachchan captioned the video, “What A Beautiful Sight...! 5 Planets Aligned Together Today... Beautiful And Rare... Hope You Witnessed It too.”

Netizens, however, seem to disagree with the superstar. A user, in the comment section, wrote, “With all due respect this is not a photo or a video taken from a phone or a camera. This is from some kind of software like ‘Stellarium’. Secondly, this is not of any recent time. Since last week, Mars and Venus are close to Moon while Jupiter is much far away closer to Mercury. Unfortunately, this post is a bit misleading.”

Another user wrote, “As an astronomer I wish to explain that this is not a rare event. Further I am sure that this video isn’t real, it’s a screen capture of simulation software.”

These comments led us to investigate the credibility of the video.

Let’s find the truth.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim to be false as the video is a month old and not from a real event.

On performing a reverse image search, we found the same video uploaded as a YouTube Short. It was titled “Venus, Jupiter, Moon after 6:30pm | clear sky | #shorts | Telescope view” from 26 January. From this it is evident that the video is not related to the recent planetary parade.

For further information, we contacted N. Sri Raghunandan Kumar, founder-secretary and director of the Planetary Society, India to speak about the viral video and the actual event. This is what he had to say:

“That’s a simulated animation of night sky created using astronomical software, probably Stellarium. However, people/social media have exaggerated it and started promoting the video as one observed through a telescope. The video is totally unrelated to what happened yesterday in the sky. In the visual illustration above…when the view was zoomed, they have shown Jupiter below the moon. But in reality, Jupiter is nowhere near the moon. Just see the actual photo of the sky taken yesterday below.”

He added, “As per the real picture, the planet Mars was near the moon on 28 March 2023. Jupiter was near the Sun and set before anyone could see it. In other words, Jupiter set a few minutes after the Sun which set along with Mercury. Hence, it was not visible to the naked eyes. Hence in this world of misinformation, whether it is Amitabh Bachchan or anyone, one has to be careful and verify before posting anything.”

“This was the reality. Jupiter was nowhere in the scene as it is close to the Sun. In Amitabh Bachchan’s video, Jupiter is shown beside the moon when in reality Mars was near the moon on 28 March 2023,” explained Mr. Raghunandan Kumar.

He continued, “More importantly moon’s conjunction with Mars occurred on 28 March 2023 due to which Mars was spotted beside the moon.”

“Here is the position of the planets in the sky at 7 p.m. We can clearly see Jupiter and Mercury setting along with the Sun. And what is near the moon is Mars. Whereas in Mr. Bachchans video, he showed Jupiter,” he said.