5 planets to be visible in the night sky next week in rare ‘alignment’

Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Mars will appear in the night sky near a waxing crescent Moon. While it should be visible from all parts of the world, whether you will be able to see it will be dependent on where you are. For the best chance of viewing the planets, you will need to try and get an unobstructed view of the horizon.

“Wait until the sun has set and then go out and look low in that bright part of the sky where the sun has just set with binoculars, and you should see brighter Jupiter next to fainter Mercury,” Rick Fienberg, senior contributing editor at Sky & Telescope magazine, told NPR.

According to Fienberg, Venus will be high in the sky and easier to spot. But Uranus, which will appear near Venus, will appear faint and will only be visible if you have binoculars. Mars will shine relatively brighter near the Moon.

This event is not a true planetary alignment where the planets will appear in a line, but it still presents the opportunity to see five different planets in the sky at the same time.

An actual planetary alignment happened in June last year when Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn aligned in the sky. That was the first time that truly aligned in the previous eighteen years, and such an event will not actually happen for another forty years. The June event was also special for another reason–the five planets were aligned in the same order as their distance from the Sun.