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.

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 16.3° south-east 05:40 -0.4 Ophiuchus
Venus 16.3° south-east 05:37 -3.9 Ophiuchus
Mars 23.0° south-east 04:46 1.7 Libra
Jupiter 45.1° south 01:10 -1.9 Virgo
Saturn 15.9° west 18:26 -0.3 Gemini

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 16h57m 21°48'S Ophiuchus -3.9 10"9
Jupiter 12h54m 4°28'S Virgo -1.9 32"9
Mercury 17h01m 20°48'S Ophiuchus -0.4 6"5
Saturn 07h48m 21°05'N Gemini -0.3 20"4
Mars 15h07m 17°10'S Libra 1.7 3"9

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
22 Jan 1984 All seven planets 16 Jun 2022
04 May 2002 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
07 Feb 2016

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

84%

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.

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12 Mar 2005  –  Mercury at greatest elongation east

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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