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

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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 after sunset.

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
Mercury 18.6° west 21:42 0.4 Gemini
Mars 19.4° west 21:46 1.8 Gemini
Venus 32.5° west 22:47 -4.1 Cancer
Jupiter 39.0° west 23:15 -1.9 Cancer
Saturn 55.6° south-west 00:59 0.9 Virgo

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 08h41m 20°26'N Cancer -4.1 16"8
Jupiter 09h14m 16°54'N Cancer -1.9 33"5
Mercury 07h49m 21°43'N Gemini 0.4 8"1
Saturn 11h40m 4°33'N Virgo 0.9 17"5
Mars 07h37m 22°44'N Gemini 1.8 3"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
22 Aug 2084 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
27 Nov 2098

The sky on 19 Aug 2025

The sky on 19 August 2025
Sunrise
06:14
Sunset
19:33
Twilight ends
21:04
Twilight begins
04:43

26-day old moon
Waning Crescent

7%

26 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 04:47 11:40 18:32
Venus 03:32 10:36 17:39
Moon 02:15 09:53 17:27
Mars 09:31 15:27 21:22
Jupiter 02:56 10:05 17:13
Saturn 21:08 03:05 09:02
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.

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10 Aug 2098  –  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.

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