2002 Planetary alignement In april 2002 the inner planets had aligned and this event was captured in this beautiful photo:



But, according to this website simulations for the date, Jupiter was pretty much away. Is that possible? Can Jupiter saw as a straight line even be so far from the other planets?
Below is an image of the solar system from that date. You can imagine drawing lines from the Earth to the various planets. You will see that Saturn, Mars, Venus and Mercury are quite closely aligned. And Jupiter is about 25 degrees out of that alignment. This matches with the photo that shows Jupiter further from the other planets.



Note that my image, derived from Nasa shows the orbits of the planets are not equally spaced. Your image does not represent reality.

The photo shows four planets quite close, and Jupiter a little way from them, just as the model of the solar system suggests. Of course the planets are in a straight line in the sky. They always are in a straight line, because they all are on the ecliptic. The alignment was significant because the planets appeared close together.

All the planets move around the sun in (almost) the same plane. The Earth also moves in this plane. The plane that the planets all move it is called the "plane of the ecliptic". Imagine a circle drawn on a piece of paper. If you look at the circle from above you see a circle. If you look at it from an angle you see an ellipse, and if you look at it from the side you only see a line. The Earth is in the same plane as the other planets, so all the planets appear to be moving in a line. This means that the positions of the planets in the sky will "always" be in a line, even when there is no alignment. The plane of the ecliptic looks like a line, because Earth is on the plane.

However when there is an alignment with the Earth (as there was in 2002) the planets will appear to be not only on the line of the ecliptic but close together in the sky.

Of course the planets are not actually close together, and there are no gravitational or other malevolent influence of planets being in a line