Stunning ‘Planet Parade’ Visible In Night Sky This Week — How To See It – Forbes
A very rare planetary alignment on Tuesday, Jan. 21 and Saturday, Jan. 25 is being promoted online. It’s not specific to those dates, but six planets are now in the night sky, four of them visible to the naked eye.Sky chart showing the planetary lineup visible after dark in January 2025.Four planets are visible in the night sky immediately after sunset, with Venus and Saturn in the southwest, Jupiter high in the southeast and Mars in the east.The best time to look is about 45 minutes after sunset when you are, until around three hours later, when Venus and Saturn will set in the west.Venus and Saturn are in close conjunction this weekend. On Saturday, Jan. 18, they will get to within two degrees of each other. Venus—the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon—will shine 110 times brighter than Saturn.It’s not correct to call the gathering of planets an alignment. “Planets always appear along a line in the sky, so the ‘alignment’ isn’t special,” wrote Preston Dyches, Public engagement specialist at NASA, in a blog post. “These multi-planet viewing opportunities aren’t super rare, but they don’t happen every year, so it’s worth checking it out.”There are two other planets in the night sky, though neither is bright enough to be without a telescope. Neptune is just above Venus and Saturn, while Uranus is just above Jupiter.Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, is the only one missing from the night sky. It’s currently in the morning sky, though lost in the sun’s glare. Earlier this month, the BepiColumbo spacecraft took close-up images of its craters.If a planet is visible from the night side of Earth, it’s always seen along an imaginary path through the sky called the ecliptic. This is the plane of the solar system. The ecliptic can easily understood if you picture a flat, round disk with the sun at the center, according to Sky & Telescope. All the planets, from Mercury out through Neptune, circle it in roughly the same plane. All of the planets, as well as the sun and moon, appear to travel along this path in the sky.Currently rising in the east as the sun sets in the west is Mars, which on Jan. 12 reached “opposition” when Earth is precisely positioned between it and the sun. Now closer to Earth than at any time since late 2022 and until early 2027, the red planet—visible below Jupiter—looks a golden-reddish color to the naked eye.On Jan. 13, the first full moon of the year, the “Wolf Moon,” dramatically occulted Mars, moving across to hide the red planet for around an hour as seen from North America. Mars was about 266 times farther away than the moon.The “planet parade” will continue through February, with a crescent moon joining on Friday, Jan. 31, when it will shine one degree from Saturn. The following evening, on Saturday, Feb. 1, a crescent moon will shine two degrees from bright Venus. These spectacular sights will occur just days after the new moon on Wednesday, Jan. 29, which will signal the beginning of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the “Year of the Snake.” Its timings are based on the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar, which uses the moon’s phases and the Earth’s orbit around the sun, and will end with the rise of the full “Snow Moon” on Wednesday, Feb. 12.One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site’s Terms of Service. We’ve summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:So, how can you be a power user?Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site’s Terms of Service.
