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 evening sky

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed

Please wait
Loading 0/4
Click and drag to rotate
Mouse wheel to zoom in/out
Touch with mouse to dismiss
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 after sunset. However, Venus will be very tricky to see since it will set very shortly after the Sun. To see it you will need to have an exceptionally flat western horizon, for example by observing over an ocean horizon at the coast. At sunset, it will have an altitude of 5.9°.

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
Venus 5.9° north-west 21:16 -4.2 Gemini
Mercury 17.6° west 22:22 0.4 Gemini
Jupiter 48.6° south-west 00:59 -2.1 Leo
Mars 51.2° south-west 01:25 0.5 Leo
Saturn 52.9° south-west 01:47 0.8 Leo

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 06h07m 25°16'N Gemini -4.2 52"7
Jupiter 10h15m 12°02'N Leo -2.1 36"3
Mercury 07h20m 23°10'N Gemini 0.4 8"2
Mars 10h34m 10°31'N Leo 0.5 7"8
Saturn 11h28m 5°53'N Leo 0.8 18"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
All seven planets 22 Jan 1984
21 Sep 1977 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
26 Feb 1982

The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:58
Sunset
19:29
Twilight ends
21:00
Twilight begins
05:27

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

87%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:29 14:14 20:59
Venus 06:24 12:10 17:56
Moon 22:00 03:15 08:23
Mars 05:43 11:09 16:35
Jupiter 08:42 15:39 22:36
Saturn 06:07 11:43 17:19
All times shown in EDT.

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 Jun 1980  –  Mercury at highest altitude in evening sky
14 Jun 1980  –  Mercury at greatest elongation east
01 Aug 1980  –  Mercury at greatest elongation west
03 Aug 1980  –  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

Ashburn

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

39.04°N
77.49°W
EDT

Color scheme