A Unique Alignment of 7 Planets Will Soon Grace the Sky
A rare celestial spectacle is set to illuminate Earth’s night skies. On the evening of February 28, 2025, all seven other planets in the Solar System—Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars—will align in a striking row. This breathtaking event, known as a great planetary alignment, promises a stunning visual treat.
Six Planets Align in January 2025
That’s not the only exciting event. On January 21, 2025, six of the seven other planets—Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus, and Saturn—will align in the sky, with Mercury being the only one not included in this grand display.
While it’s not unusual for a few planets to be on the same side of the Sun at the same time, it’s far rarer for most, or all, of the planets to align.
From Three to Six Planets
An alignment involves anywhere from three to eight planets. When five or six planets line up, it’s considered a large alignment, with five-planet alignments being much more common than six-planet ones.
Great alignments involving seven planets are, of course, the most infrequent.
These alignments aren’t the perfectly ordered planetary arrangements often depicted in diagrams and illustrations of the Solar System. Unfortunately, such a formation doesn’t occur in reality.
The planets do, however, seem to align along an invisible line.
Why Planets Align
This happens because the planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun on a flat plane known as the ecliptic. While some planets have orbits that are slightly tilted above or below this plane, they generally remain on the same level, much like grooves on a vinyl record, due to the way stars like our Sun are formed.
A newborn star begins to spin, causing the surrounding cloud of material to swirl into a flat disk that feeds into the star at its equator.
Planets develop from the remaining material in the disk, and if undisturbed by other gravitational forces, they will continue to orbit along that same plane.
Rare Planetary Alignments
At times, the planets align on the same side of the Sun in their orbits, allowing us to observe them together in the sky. This will happen on the evenings of January 21 and February 28.
Your ability to see the alignments, as well as the times the planets rise and set and their order, will depend on your location on Earth.
There are resources available that can provide you with specific times and sky positions for your area.
Time and Date offers an interactive tool where you can select the date you wish to observe. It provides the rise and set times for each planet, their positions in the sky, and how easy or difficult they will be to spot.
Stellarium offers a similar web tool that displays the positions of all the planets.
Sky Tonight is a free mobile app that uses your phone’s sensors to determine your location and shows you the real-time positions of celestial objects on a map of the sky above. You can also find a list of other options here.
To fully enjoy the view of the planets, you’ll need binoculars or a telescope, so if you haven’t already, start planning ahead. And be sure to hope for clear skies!
Read the original article on: Science Alert
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