Seven planets in the solar system will be visible in the night sky on Friday, giving skywatchers the rare chance to catch multiple worlds at once.
The planets will not actually be in “alignment” on Friday; they will be visible in various parts of the sky as they travel around the sun on the same ecliptic pathway, similar to a racetrack.
The eight planets, including Earth, all orbit the sun at various rates of speed.
Mars completes an orbit every 88 Earth days, while Neptune takes about 165 Earth years to complete an orbit. Therefore, the planets are usually in different positions on the “racetrack’ around the sun.
However, this week, all the planets wound up on the same side of the sun, explained Tracy Becker, a lead scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, per The Washington Post. According to Christopher Baird, an associate professor of physics at West Texas A&M University, the next time all eight planets will be aligned in the same 180-degree-wide patch of sky will be on May 6, 2492, Live Science reported.
Other planetary parades of four or five planets occur every few years. In August of this year, four planets will be visible just before sunrise, and in October 2028, five planets will be visible, once again just before sunrise, according to NASA.
To see this week’s seven-planet parade, you don’t need to go to a remote area away from city lights, per Forbes magazine. The most important factor is to find a location with a wide-open view where tall buildings and trees do not obstruct your line of sight, as some of the planets will be low on the horizon.
Timing is also important: The best time to start looking for the planets is at twilight, just after sunset.
Venus, the show’s star, will be shining the brightest and easy to spot with the naked eye in the western sky. Mercury and Saturn can be found lower on the horizon below Venus, but they will be dimmer and a little trickier to find.
Look upward to find Mars and Jupiter. Mars will have a reddish hue, and Jupiter will appear as a bright white light.
A telescope or high-powered binoculars will be needed to spot Neptune and Uranus as they are too faint for the naked eye to see. Neptune can be found near Venus, and Uranus will appear closer to Jupiter.
The mobile phone app Sky Tonight can help users locate the “real-time positions of celestial objects on an interactive map” simply by pointing their devices at the sky, according to the app website.
The website Time and Date can tell viewers the optimal time for viewing each planet.