For the first time in more than a decade, the five bright planets – Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter – will align in such a way that they can easily be seen from Earth with the naked eye, a phenomenon that will last from Wednesday through the morning of February 20.
According to EarthSky and the Huffington Post, the bright planets will appear in a diagonal row just before dawn on Wednesday for the first time since appearing together from December 15, 2004 to January 15, 2005. Jupiter will rise first during the evening hours, followed by the red-hued Mars shortly after midnight, then gold-colored Saturn, Venus and Mercury in order.
A bright planet, by definition, is any world in our solar system that can easily be viewed without a telescope or a pair of binoculars. The reason that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are so easy to spot is because their disks reflect sunlight, as well as the relatively close worlds tend to shine with a steadier light than more distant stars or planets, explained EarthSky.
Some stargazers to get a second chance starting in August
Exactly where the planets will appear in the sky depends upon your location, but for those in the DC area, The Washington Post said that by Sunday, January 24, Mercury will appear to be close to the eastern horizon while Mars will rise in the east and Jupiter in the west-southwest. Consult your favorite astronomy website or app to find their respective relative positions.
If you miss the appearance of the bright planets over the next month, we have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that you only have to wait until August 13 to get another crack at spotting them. The bad news, at least for those living in the northern hemisphere, is that Venus and Mercury will sit low and be hard to view.
After this year, the next time that the bright planets are in this alignment will be in October of 2018, Dr. Tanya Hill, senior curator at the Melbourne Planetarium, told Australian Geographic. While this somewhat rare phenomenon is, in the words of Swinburne University research fellow Dr. Alan Duffy, is “essentially a quirk” of the universe, it is nonetheless “well worth seeing.”
The website recommends holding your arms up in a straight line from the horizon to the moon, explaining that the planets should fall along that line. They also suggest trying to find a flat area with a dark, cloud-free sky for optimal viewing – and if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, as it could take several mornings before you get a good glimpse of all five planets.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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