Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan shared a video on his official social media handles showing a zoomed-in view of stars and planets seen in the night sky.
What's the claim?: Along with Bachchan, several social media users shared the video with a claim that states that the video shows an alignment of five planets in the sky - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus.
An archive can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
What's the truth?: The zoomed-in view in the video shows the planet Jupiter with its four moons, namely, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
A unique alignment of five planets: On the evening of 28 March, five planets – Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Uranus – aligned along with the Moon. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), such alignment is occurring in the sky after ten years.
How did we find out the truth?: We checked for images of this occurrence and came across a report by Earthsky.org from 29 March 2023.
The article included a live-streamed video by The Virtual Telescope Project which showed the alignment of Mars (near the Moon), Uranus, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter.
Mars is marked with red, Uranus and Venus are marked with yellow and Mercury and Jupiter are marked with a blue circle.
(Source: The Virtual Telescope Project/Screenshot)
The alignment of the planets with respect of the moon does not match the zoomed-in video posted by Bachchan.
The same live-streamed video was also shared by report shared by Space.com.
This report also carried another picture of the alignment captured by
Starry Night Pro Plus 7 astronomy software which shows Mars near Moon following Uranus, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter.
We compared the viral video with the visual from Space.com and noticed that the alignment of the planets is different.
In the viral video, only Jupiter planet can be seen.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
We reached out to experts: We contacted Devansh Cholera, an amateur astronomer and former secretary of the Public Astronomical Observatory, Goa, who confirmed to us that the zoomed-in visuals shared by Bachchan shows Jupiter planet with it's four moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
Conclusion: The video is being shared with a misleading claim that it shows five planets aligned.
(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)