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

A parade of 5 planets in the morning sky

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed

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The sky at

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, Venus 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 11.7°.

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 11.7° south-east 05:44 -3.9 Libra
Mercury 17.0° south-east 05:12 -0.5 Libra
Saturn 27.2° south-east 04:07 0.6 Virgo
Mars 38.9° south-east 02:44 1.8 Virgo
Jupiter 12.8° west 17:21 -2.7 Taurus

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 14h53m 15°20'S Libra -3.9 10"3
Jupiter 05h37m 22°47'N Taurus -2.7 46"2
Mercury 15h12m 15°25'S Libra -0.5 6"6
Saturn 14h07m 10°30'S Virgo 0.6 15"5
Mars 12h08m 0°27'N Virgo 1.8 4"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
All seven planets 22 Jan 1984
All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
07 Apr 1960

The sky on 22 Nov 2024

The sky on 22 November 2024
Sunrise
06:47
Sunset
16:28
Twilight ends
18:05
Twilight begins
05:10

21-day old moon
Waning Crescent

45%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:40 13:06 17:32
Venus 10:13 14:39 19:06
Moon 22:16 05:32 12:36
Mars 20:52 04:15 11:38
Jupiter 17:26 00:53 08:20
Saturn 13:09 18:41 00:13
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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13 Feb 1954  –  Mercury at greatest elongation east
14 Feb 1954  –  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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