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. However, Mercury will be quite tricky to see since it will rise very shortly before the Sun. To see it you will need to have a flat eastern horizon, clear of obstructions such as buildings or trees. At sunrise, it will have an altitude of 13.2°.

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 13.2° east 03:38 0.3 Taurus
Venus 20.8° east 02:56 -3.9 Taurus
Jupiter 36.4° east 01:35 -2.2 Aries
Mars 44.2° south 23:50 -0.5 Aquarius
Saturn 1.6° south-west 20:03 0.1 Sagittarius

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 04h18m 19°47'N Taurus -3.9 12"4
Jupiter 03h05m 16°22'N Aries -2.2 34"4
Mars 23h45m 4°57'S Aquarius -0.5 11"3
Saturn 19h12m 22°00'S Sagittarius 0.1 18"3
Mercury 05h10m 19°47'N Taurus 0.3 7"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
25 Apr 2163 All seven planets
04 Sep 2219 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
08 Jun 2233

The sky on 23 Nov 2024

The sky on 23 November 2024
Sunrise
06:43
Sunset
16:15
Twilight ends
17:54
Twilight begins
05:03


Waning Crescent

42%

22 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:33 12:55 17:17
Venus 10:09 14:32 18:54
Moon 23:09 06:06 12:50
Mars 20:36 04:03 11:30
Jupiter 17:09 00:40 08:11
Saturn 12:58 18:29 23:59
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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