The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

A parade of 7 planets in the morning sky

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Inner Planets feed

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The sky at

All seven 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 6.5°.

Additionally, Mercury will be quite tricky to see since it will also rise shortly before the Sun. It will also be visible only if you have a flat eastern horizon, clear of obstructions such as buildings or trees. At sunrise, it will have an altitude of 9.0°.

The planets Neptune and Uranus are too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, and a pair of binoculars or a small telescope is needed to see them. Additionally, since they are no brighter than many stars, a finder-chart is needed to show their positions relative to the surrounding stars. Neptune will lie in the constellation of Capricornus shining at magnitude 8.0; you can find a chart of its position here. Uranus will lie in the constellation of Capricornus shining at magnitude 5.8; you can find a chart of its position here.

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 6.5° east 05:16 -3.9 Pisces
Mercury 9.0° east 05:03 0.3 Pisces
Mars 22.8° south-east 03:25 0.9 Capricornus
Jupiter 25.2° south-east 02:59 -2.1 Capricornus
Neptune 27.3° south 02:14 8.0 Capricornus
Uranus 26.5° south 02:11 5.8 Capricornus
Saturn 20.2° south-west 22:47 0.1 Ophiuchus

Celestial coordinates

The positions of each of the planets will be:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Venus 23h55m 2°06'S Pisces -3.9 10"7
Jupiter 21h06m 17°06'S Capricornus -2.1 35"1
Saturn 16h47m 20°29'S Ophiuchus 0.1 17"9
Mercury 00h24m 0°09'S Pisces 0.3 7"9
Mars 21h06m 17°49'S Capricornus 0.9 5"8
Uranus 20h07m 20°44'S Capricornus 5.8 3"4
Neptune 20h16m 19°22'S Capricornus 8.0 2"2

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous occurrences

« Previous Objects simultaneously visible Next »
07 Jan 2123 All seven planets
25 Jul 2162 All five planets that are
visible to the unaided eye
10 Dec 2174

The sky on 28 Mar 2024

The sky on 28 March 2024
Sunrise
06:40
Sunset
19:13
Twilight ends
20:47
Twilight begins
05:06

18-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

85%

18 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:08 13:57 20:46
Venus 06:08 11:53 17:38
Moon 21:47 02:58 08:00
Mars 05:29 10:52 16:16
Jupiter 08:21 15:22 22:23
Saturn 05:52 11:26 17:00
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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07 Jul 2163  –  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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