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.

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 16.1° west 22:00 0.4 Gemini
Mars 17.1° west 22:05 1.8 Gemini
Venus 28.1° west 23:02 -4.1 Cancer
Jupiter 33.7° west 23:28 -1.9 Cancer
Saturn 46.5° south-west 01:01 0.9 Virgo

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 08h41m 20°26'N Cancer -4.1 16"8
Jupiter 09h14m 16°54'N Cancer -1.9 33"5
Mercury 07h49m 21°43'N Gemini 0.4 8"1
Saturn 11h40m 4°33'N Virgo 0.9 17"5
Mars 07h37m 22°44'N Gemini 1.8 3"7

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
22 Aug 2084 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
27 Nov 2098

The sky on 22 Nov 2024

The sky on 22 November 2024
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
16:16
Twilight ends
17:55
Twilight begins
05:02


Waning Gibbous

51%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:36 12:57 17:19
Venus 10:09 14:31 18:53
Moon 22:03 05:23 12:29
Mars 20:40 04:06 11:33
Jupiter 17:14 00:45 08:16
Saturn 13:02 18:32 00:03
All times shown in EST.

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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