A very rare treat is about to grace Earth’s night skies.
Five or six planets assembling is known as a large alignment, with five-planet alignments significantly more frequent than six.
These alignments aren’t the neat planetary queues you see in diagrams and illustrations of the Solar System.
This occurs because the planets of the Solar System all orbit the Sun on a flat plane called the ecliptic.
This is what will grace the sky on the evenings of January 21 and February 28.
The night skies of Earth are about to witness an extremely uncommon treat.
When Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars all align themselves in a straight line on the evening of February 28, 2025, all seven of the other planets in the Solar System will be visible in the night sky simultaneously. This is known as a great planetary alignment, and it will be a breathtaking visual feast.
However, that is not all. Six of the seven other planets—Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus, and Saturn—as well as Mercury will all be visible in the sky simultaneously in a broad alignment between now and January 21, 2025.
While it is not unusual for a few planets to be on the same side of the Sun at the same time, it is less common for most or even all of the planets to be in alignment.
An alignment can have anywhere from three to eight planets. A big alignment is when five or six planets come together, and five-planet alignments are much more common than six-planet alignments.
Naturally, seven-planet great alignments are the most uncommon.
The tidy planetary queues you see in Solar System diagrams and illustrations are not these alignments. Unfortunately, that is not something that truly occurs in the real universe.
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However, the planets do seem to align themselves in a hypothetical line.
The reason for this is that the ecliptic, a flat plane, is where all of the planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun. Because of the way stars like our Sun form, all of the planets are essentially on the same level as grooves on a record, though some have orbits that are slightly tilted above or below this plane.
Within a cloud of material, a baby star begins to spin; the surrounding cloud whirls into a flattish disk that feeds into the star around its equator.
If other gravitational forces do not interfere, planets will continue to orbit in that level position after forming from the remnants of the disk.
On occasion, we can see the planets in the sky simultaneously because they will be on the same side of the Sun as they travel through their orbits. The evenings of January 21 and February 28 will see this in the sky.
How to observe.
Where in the world you are looking from will determine whether you can see the alignments, the times the planets rise and set, and the order in which they do so.
To obtain those times and locations, you can use certain tools.
Time and Date features an interactive tool that lets you choose the date you wish to view, along with information about each planet’s rise and set times, location in the sky, and visibility difficulty.
A comparable online tool that displays the locations of every planet is called Stellarium.
Sky Tonight is a free smartphone app that determines your location using the hardware of your phone and displays the current locations of celestial objects on an overhead map. This is also a good list of other options.
Plan ahead now if you haven’t already, as you will need a telescope or binoculars to see the planets in all their splendor. Additionally, cross your fingers for clear skies.
