A parade of 5 planets in the evening sky

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed


All five of the planets that are visible to the unaided eye planets will be above the horizon at the same time, shortly after sunset. However, Mercury will be quite tricky to see since it will set very shortly after the Sun. To see it you will need to have a flat western horizon, clear of obstructions such as buildings or trees. At sunset, it will have an altitude of 12.8°.

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 sunset will be as follows:

Planet Altitude
at sunset
Direction
at sunset
Planet
sets at
Mag Constellation
Mercury 12.8° west 20:46 0.2 Virgo
Venus 22.5° west 21:36 -4.4 Virgo
Mars 26.6° south-west 21:58 1.4 Virgo
Saturn 35.4° south-west 22:59 0.5 Virgo
Jupiter 36.7° south 00:00 -2.2 Libra

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 12h40m 6°42'S Virgo -4.4 27"2
Jupiter 15h18m 17°20'S Libra -2.2 38"8
Mercury 11h43m 0°28'S Virgo 0.2 7"3
Saturn 13h59m 9°43'S Virgo 0.5 16"2
Mars 12h58m 6°10'S Virgo 1.4 4"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
21 Dec 2022 All seven planets 07 Jan 2123
26 Sep 2040 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
26 May 2056

The sky on 7 Jun 2025

The sky on 7 June 2025
Sunrise
05:37
Sunset
20:01
Twilight ends
21:45
Twilight begins
03:54


Waxing Gibbous

93%

11 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:16 13:34 20:51
Venus 03:17 09:46 16:15
Moon 17:09 22:21 03:28
Mars 10:50 17:34 00:17
Jupiter 06:31 13:42 20:53
Saturn 01:54 07:52 13:50
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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