The stars look very different today

IT looks like a view from a galaxy far, far away. But this heavenly sight of two planets aligning yesterday was much closer to home – at Brighton Pier.

Venus and Jupiter appeared like a ‘double star’ above the horizon – but you would have needed to get up before sunrise to catch it.

The planets will continue to align for the rest of the week. Jupiter, which takes 12 years to orbit the Sun, and Venus, which whizzes round it in 225 days, are more than 440million miles apart at the moment, but they appeared just a third of a degree apart yesterday. While they align close to the Sun every year, being easily visible occurs only every 15 to 20 years as the Sun usually blocks our view.

Tom Kerss of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich said: ‘This is a fascinating reminder that everything in the Solar System is in motion, like a large clockwork model in space.’