Exactly How, When And Where To Easily See All Five Naked-Eye Planets Align For The Last Time Until 2041
Illustration of the Solar System viewed from beyond Neptune, with all eight planets visible around … [+]
This weekend is your last chance to see all five naked-eye planets together in the night sky until 2041.
Get up before sunrise and cast your eyes to the southeastern horizon and you’ll be able to see Mercury closest to the horizon followed by Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Earlier this month it was possible to see all of those naked-eye planets within 91º. That’s been lengthening ever since and on Friday, June 24, 2022 it will be visible over a much wider 107º.
Does that make it “better” or “worse?” Neither– but crucially it makes it much easier to find Mercury because the tiny planet is now relatively high in the sky, rising an hour before the Sun.
As a bonus there will also be a waning 19%-lit crescent Moon between Venus and Mars. It promises to be a beautiful sight, though you may need a pair of binoculars to spot Mercury.
The five naked-eye planets will be arranged in their natural order from the Sun. First will be Mercury (the dimmest) and Venus (the brightest)—the two inner planets that orbit the Sun closer than we do on Earth—followed by Mars, Jupiter and then Saturn.
At dawn on June 24th, the crescent Moon joins the planetary lineup. It’s conveniently placed between … [+]
Alignments like these occasionally occur because the planets are buzzing around the Solar System at vastly different speeds; Mercury’s orbit of the Sun takes 88 days, Earth’s takes a year and Saturn’s takes 29 years. So only very occasionally can there be a cluster of planets in one place in Earth’s night sky.
However, the planets are not actually aligned. It’s merely a line-of-sight phenomenon—an optical illusion. The planets are many millions of miles from each other and from Earth.
According to Sky & Telescope magazine the last time the five naked-eye planets were strung across the horizon in sequence was in December 2004, but this year, the gap between Mercury and Saturn is much shorter.
It won’t happen again until 2041, though slightly before that on September 8, 2040 comes an ultra-rare “golden conjunction.” Mars, Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter visible in the same tiny 10º patch of the night sky right after sunset in the west.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
