| schema:text
| - In mid-November 2024, a photograph circulated on social media, allegedly showing three planets perfectly aligned above the Giza pyramids in Egypt. "Mercury, Venus and Saturn above the pyramids at Giza (Egypt). This happens once every 2373 years. And this is happening tonight," one X post captioned the photograph, reaching over 310,000 views.
(X user @Slick_Ninja10)
"Damn. It's fake. I can't undo the post for some reason," one comment under the post read. "Of course the picture is fake. I'm in Hawaii not Egypt. It's a picture to explain current astrology. Message is still there" the user admitted in a reply.
Despite that, the photo spread for years on multiple social media platforms. For instance, the image was also posted to YouTube, while a similar image spread in 2022 on Reddit with a caption reading: "Every 2373 years, Mercury, Venus and Saturn align on the pyramids of Giza. (December 3, 2012)."
However, because the in-question photograph was digitally created and did not actually show Mercury, Venus and Saturn aligned above the pyramids in Giza, we have rated this claim as fake.
Source of the Image
TinEye and Google search results indicated the original photograph featured the pyramids, but not the planets.
(TinEye)
Although the original photo of the pyramids without the planets had been circulating online years before the edited version appeared online, its original source remains unknown. However, we found nearly identical photo attributed to Khaled Desouki, Agence France-Presse (AFP) Chief Photographer in Egypt, confirming that such a shot could have been captured.
Below you can see a comparison of the edited (on the left) and original photograph (on the right).
(@Slick_Ninja10, TinEye)
AFP found the edited version of the photo likely originated from an April 2011 blog post. Notably, this blog post was shared over a year before the alleged planetary alignment in 2012 that the image supposedly depicts, further confirming the image was digitally created.
We have reached out to the supposed author of the blog post via Facebook to ask whether they were an original creator of the image, and if so, what tools they used to create it. We will update this article if we receive a response.
Could Such a Photo Be Captured?
Jake Foster, a Royal Observatory Greenwich astronomer, emphasized that the in-question image has been circulating online for many years and it is often claimed that the image was taken on Dec. 3, 2012.
"The three planets in question did align in the early morning sky on that date, and it would have been visible from Giza, however this particular image appears to be fake, or at the very least heavily digitally altered," he stated, adding that:
[...] the positions of the 'planets' in this image compared to one another is not quite right based on astronomical models that can show us precisely where they would have been at the time. Secondly, the claim is that this image is showing us Mercury, Venus and Saturn. These objects should all be considerably different in brightness, though the image shows them as all similarly bright. As well as this, the colouration is bizarre - none of those three planets should appear purple or blue in colour.
Moreover, astrophysicist Irwin Shapiro told us via email that just glancing at the photograph made him highly suspicious. "Mercury cannot look brighter than Venus, or even as close to as bright, when Venus is as bright as in that pictured in the sky. Also, Mercury and Venus do not look to be such large balls to the unaided eye looking at the sky," he wrote.
Justin Mason, Planetarium Director at the Old Dominion University, also told us the photo was not real, underscoring it shows the planets with strikingly different colors which would not be the case in an authentic photograph. Mason pointed out that in a real photo the planets would have vastly different brightnesses. "Venus would have been about 15 times brighter than Mercury, which would have been about 2.5 times brighter than Saturn," he stated. According to Mason, the planets would also not align in such a straight line and the alignment would appear much more vertical than the photo suggests.
Once Every 2,373 Years?
Additionally, a claim often attached to the image stated that such an alignment of planets happens once every 2,373 years.
A NASA spokesperson told us via email that "alignments of two to four planets are relatively common and happen multiple times a year."
Foster further explained, "It is possible for Mercury, Venus, and Saturn to align in the night sky; in fact, this happens every few years. Theoretically, they could align above the Pyramids of Giza, but it all depends on your vantage point."
He elaborated, "You can make the planets appear to line up above the chimneys on your local street if you position yourself correctly, but that doesn't mean those chimneys were designed to align with celestial objects. Similarly, the very specific claim of 'every 2,737 years' lacks any apparent scientific basis as far as we can determine."
Mason told us that Mercury, Venus, and Saturn do occasionally get close to each other in the sky and align as in the picture, and it is not a rare phenomenon. He underscored, "Every few years this conjunction will occur as the planets move in their orbits around the Sun. Sometimes this will be visible at night, or they may be in the sky during the day (which would make them hard to view)."
"A particularly close alignment like that which is pictured is even more rare, but not so exceedingly rare as to occur exactly every 2,373 years," he added.
We reached out to several additional experts for further clarification and will update this article as more information becomes available.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)