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 very tricky to see since it will rise very shortly before the Sun. To see it you will need to have an exceptionally flat eastern horizon, for example by observing over an ocean horizon at the coast. At sunrise, it will have an altitude of 6.8°.

Additionally, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter will be quite tricky to see since they will also rise shortly before the Sun. They will also be visible only if you have a flat eastern horizon, clear of obstructions such as buildings or trees. At sunrise, they will have altitudes of 10.6°, 11.4° and 12.0° respectively.

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 6.8° south-east 05:30 -3.9 Capricornus
Mercury 10.6° south-east 05:06 0.1 Capricornus
Saturn 11.4° south-east 04:57 0.6 Capricornus
Jupiter 12.0° south-east 04:53 -1.9 Capricornus
Mars 25.9° south 00:48 0.8 Libra

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 21h43m 14°41'S Capricornus -3.9 10"5
Jupiter 20h30m 19°19'S Capricornus -1.9 32"0
Mercury 21h36m 14°54'S Capricornus 0.1 7"1
Saturn 20h43m 18°40'S Capricornus 0.6 15"2
Mars 15h50m 19°04'S Libra 0.8 6"7

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
21 Dec 2022 All seven planets 07 Jan 2123
14 Apr 2078 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
17 Sep 2080

The sky on 22 Nov 2024

The sky on 22 November 2024
Sunrise
06:41
Sunset
16:16
Twilight ends
17:55
Twilight begins
05:02

21-day old moon
Waning Crescent

48%

21 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 08:36 12:57 17:19
Venus 10:09 14:31 18:53
Moon 22:03 05:23 12:29
Mars 20:40 04:06 11:33
Jupiter 17:14 00:45 08:16
Saturn 13:02 18:32 00:03
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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20 May 2080  –  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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