An artist's illustration of the planets of the solar system arranged in a row. (Image credit: NASA via Getty Images)
On Friday (February 28), an amazing and rare event will occur in the night sky – seven planets of the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will line up in a row.
While most of these planets can be seen in the night sky from January onwards, Mercury will join the spectacle for just a few days before Saturn disappears into the bright light of sunset in early March.
According to NASA, five of these celestial bodies will be clearly visible without a telescope, but a high-quality telescope will be needed to fully view the entire spectacle.
That's because at least two planets — Uranus and Neptune — will be too faint to see with the naked eye and will likely be hidden by the glare of the setting sun at twilight, NASA said. Saturn will also be harder to see in some regions because of its position close to the horizon.
According to SkyatNightMagazine, if you have a good telescope to capture all seven planets in the Northern Hemisphere, the best time to view them will be after sunset on Friday (February 28) at around 8:30 p.m. local time.
Planetary conjunctions occur when two or more planets appear to be close together in the sky. Of course, this is only our perception from Earth; in reality, the planets are vastly separated.
Such coincidences happen because the planets of the solar system orbit the Sun in roughly the same plane as the Earth, and sometimes they line up when differences in their orbital distances and speeds cause them to congregate on the night side of the Earth.
While such conjunctions are not uncommon, they become more unusual with each new planet added to the chain. The three inner planets—Mercury, Venus, and Earth—line up in the sky within 3.6 degrees every 39.6 years. It would take 396 billion years for all eight planets in the solar system to line up that close—something that has never happened before and won’t happen until the Sun becomes a red giant, swallowing Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth in the process.
We recommend Time and Date and Stellarium as great online resources for finding dates and times of observation based on your location in the world. On mobile, Sky Tonight is a free app that does the same job.
TOPICS Solar System
Ben TurnerNavigate Social LinksSenior Staff Writer
Ben Turner is a staff writer for Live Science based in the UK. He covers topics ranging from physics and astronomy to technology and climate change. He holds a degree in particle physics from University College London before becoming a journalist. In his spare time, Ben enjoys reading, playing guitar, and disgracing himself at chess.
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