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 15.8° west 21:55 0.4 Cancer
Venus 21.0° west 22:23 -3.9 Gemini
Jupiter 27.1° west 22:52 -1.9 Cancer
Saturn 45.2° south-west 00:50 0.9 Virgo
Mars 35.3° south 01:51 -0.9 Virgo

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 07h10m 24°06'N Gemini -3.9 11"8
Jupiter 08h44m 18°46'N Cancer -1.9 32"5
Mars 13h46m 12°02'S Virgo -0.9 13"4
Mercury 08h03m 20°53'N Cancer 0.4 8"1
Saturn 11h45m 4°07'N Virgo 0.9 17"6

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
07 Jan 2123 All seven planets 25 Apr 2163
18 Dec 2156 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
25 Jul 2162

The sky on 20 Apr 2024

The sky on 20 April 2024
Sunrise
05:52
Sunset
19:31
Twilight ends
21:16
Twilight begins
04:08

12-day old moon
Waxing Gibbous

90%

12 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:22 11:48 18:15
Venus 05:33 11:59 18:24
Moon 16:24 22:45 04:56
Mars 04:33 10:20 16:07
Jupiter 06:54 14:03 21:13
Saturn 04:20 09:56 15:32
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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14 Aug 2157  –  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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