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
Mercury 15.6° east 04:09 0.3 Taurus
Venus 24.2° east 03:26 -3.9 Taurus
Jupiter 41.9° east 02:04 -2.2 Aries
Mars 53.1° south 23:58 -0.5 Aquarius
Saturn 2.4° south-west 19:52 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 4 Jul 2024

The sky on 4 July 2024
Sunrise
05:44
Sunset
20:07
Twilight ends
21:51
Twilight begins
04:00


Waning Crescent

1%

28 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:21 14:24 21:27
Venus 06:22 13:31 20:41
Moon 04:09 11:52 19:37
Mars 02:16 09:04 15:53
Jupiter 03:25 10:28 17:31
Saturn 23:37 05:23 11:09
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.

Related news

09 Jul 2225  –  Mercury at highest altitude in morning sky
04 Sep 2225  –  Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky
13 Sep 2225  –  Mercury at greatest elongation east
25 Oct 2225  –  Mercury at highest altitude in morning sky

Image credit

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

Share