A parade of 7 planets in the morning sky

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed


All seven planets will be above the horizon at the same time, shortly before sunrise.

The planets Neptune and Uranus are too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, and a pair of binoculars or a small telescope is needed to see them. Additionally, since they are no brighter than many stars, a finder-chart is needed to show their positions relative to the surrounding stars. Neptune will lie in the constellation of Sagittarius shining at magnitude 8.0; you can find a chart of its position here. Uranus will lie in the constellation of Ophiuchus shining at magnitude 5.7; you can find a chart of its position here.

It is relatively rare for all of the planets to be aligned in one hemisphere so as to all be above the horizon at the same moment. Such an alignment between the five planets which are visible to the unaided eye happens roughly once every 6 years, while an alignment that also includes Uranus and Neptune, which require binoculars or a telescope to be seen, happens around once every 70 years.

However, since the planets in the outer solar system – especially Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – move quite slowly through the constellations, such alignments can occur multiple times in quick succession, or not at all for over 100 years.

The positions of all the planets at sunrise will be as follows:

Planet Altitude
at sunrise
Direction
at sunrise
Planet
rises at
Mag Constellation
Mercury 16.5° south-east 05:17 -0.2 Sagittarius
Jupiter 17.3° south-east 05:09 -1.8 Sagittarius
Neptune 17.7° south-east 05:08 8.0 Sagittarius
Venus 24.4° south-east 04:22 -4.1 Ophiuchus
Uranus 27.6° south-east 03:50 5.7 Ophiuchus
Saturn 41.7° south 01:38 0.4 Libra
Mars 43.7° south 00:41 1.2 Virgo

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 16h41m 20°20'S Ophiuchus -4.1 14"3
Jupiter 18h01m 23°08'S Sagittarius -1.8 31"4
Mercury 18h32m 21°58'S Sagittarius -0.2 6"6
Saturn 14h48m 13°52'S Libra 0.4 16"0
Mars 13h26m 7°20'S Virgo 1.2 5"6
Uranus 16h41m 22°09'S Ophiuchus 5.7 3"5
Neptune 18h01m 22°16'S Sagittarius 8.0 2"1

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
All seven planets 16 Jun 2022
26 Feb 1982 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
21 Oct 1986

The sky on 3 Jul 2025

The sky on 3 July 2025
Sunrise
05:42
Sunset
20:07
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
03:58


Waxing Gibbous

67%

8 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:48 14:43 21:38
Venus 03:00 09:52 16:44
Moon 14:02 19:35 01:01
Mars 10:19 16:47 23:14
Jupiter 05:15 12:26 19:36
Saturn 00:15 06:14 12:12
All times shown in PDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

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Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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