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 11.1°.

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 11.1° east 04:23 -3.9 Gemini
Mercury 15.3° east 04:00 0.0 Gemini
Mars 53.6° south-east 00:28 0.7 Taurus
Saturn 53.5° south-east 00:29 0.0 Taurus
Jupiter 59.7° south-east 23:38 -2.3 Aries

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 07h11m 22°35'N Gemini -3.9 10"1
Jupiter 02h46m 14°50'N Aries -2.3 36"3
Saturn 04h03m 18°40'N Taurus -0.0 17"5
Mercury 07h31m 20°02'N Gemini 0.0 7"5
Mars 04h02m 19°46'N Taurus 0.7 6"5

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
03 Oct 2112 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
05 Feb 2119

The sky on 29 Mar 2024

The sky on 29 March 2024
Sunrise
06:29
Sunset
19:06
Twilight ends
20:43
Twilight begins
04:53

19-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

79%

19 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:54 13:46 20:38
Venus 05:59 11:45 17:31
Moon 22:47 03:35 08:15
Mars 05:20 10:43 16:05
Jupiter 08:06 15:10 22:14
Saturn 05:41 11:14 16:47
All times shown in EDT.

Warning

Never attempt to point a pair of binoculars or a telescope at an object close to the Sun. Doing so may result in immediate and permanent blindness.

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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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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