You can see five planets and the moon all at once this weekend. Here’s what to know
You might want to set your alarm pretty early on Sunday to catch an amazing sight in the sky.
Five planets and the moon will all be visible about 45 minutes before sunrise on Sunday, July 19, space experts said.
“Step outside early in the morning, at least an hour before sunrise,” Jeffrey Hunt, an astronomy educator and former planetarium director told CNET. “Find the four bright planets -- Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. They look like overly bright stars. Brilliant Venus is low in the east-northeast. Mars is the lone ‘star’ in the southeast, and Jupiter and Saturn are the stars in the southwest. To your eyes, they won’t look like the photos made by spacecraft, just overly bright stars.”
The planets will appear very low in the east, and stargazers should have a clear view of the horizon, Good Morning America reported.
It’s somewhat rare because of Mercury’s close orbit to the sun, the news outlet reported. But how close together the four bright planets — Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter — will be is noteworthy, according to GMA.
“Usually they’re more spread out,” Dr. Laura Danly, curator at Griffith Observatory, told GMA. “To get all four visible like that is a very beautiful sight.”
Hunt wrote on When the Curves Line Up website that binoculars could be helpful to find the moon, Mercury and Jupiter.
Any stargazers hoping to catch the sights should look for “brilliant Venus blazes in the eastern sky,” a thin crescent moon, Mercury to the right, bright Mars, Jupiter above the horizon in the southwest and Saturn to the upper left of Jupiter, Hunt wrote.
“During the next few mornings five planets are visible, but without the moon,” Hunt wrote on When the Curves Line Up. “Additionally, Jupiter is quickly leaving the sky. So on successive mornings, look 3-4 minutes earlier each day. You may catch them in the sky until about July 25. Until about mid-August look about two hours before sunrise to see the four bright planets.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 5:24 PM with the headline "You can see five planets and the moon all at once this weekend. Here’s what to know."