A parade of 5 planets in the morning 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 before sunrise.

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
Venus 16.6° south-east 05:41 -3.9 Libra
Mercury 17.2° south-east 05:39 -0.6 Libra
Jupiter 17.3° south-east 05:37 -1.7 Libra
Mars 51.3° south 01:42 1.4 Virgo
Saturn 56.3° south-west 23:01 0.3 Leo

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 15h09m 16°20'S Libra -3.9 10"6
Jupiter 14h55m 15°42'S Libra -1.7 30"4
Mercury 15h09m 15°11'S Libra -0.6 6"6
Saturn 10h02m 13°19'N Leo 0.3 18"4
Mars 12h00m 1°52'N Virgo 1.4 5"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
07 Jan 2123 All seven planets 25 Apr 2163
07 Jan 2123 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
18 Dec 2156

The sky on 24 Nov 2024

The sky on 24 November 2024
Sunrise
07:25
Sunset
17:09
Twilight ends
18:44
Twilight begins
05:49


Waning Crescent

27%

23 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 09:09 13:40 18:11
Venus 10:49 15:21 19:52
Moon 01:04 07:35 13:56
Mars 21:28 04:47 12:07
Jupiter 18:00 01:23 08:47
Saturn 13:39 19:12 00:45
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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15 Feb 2125  –  Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky

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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