Topline<\/p>\n
For five consecutive mornings, beginning on Aug. 17, early risers will be treated to the sight of a \u201cplanet parade\u201d in the eastern sky featuring Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and the moon. Uranus and Neptune will also be in the sky but not visible. Best seen about an hour before sunrise, the highlight will be on Wednesday, Aug. 20, when a slender crescent moon will shine very close to a brilliant Venus. <\/p>\n
From Aug. 17\u201321, a spectacular \u201cplanet parade\u201d (also called an alignment) features the moon and six planets.<\/p>\n
gettyKey Facts<\/p>\n
Venus and Jupiter will shine close to each other above due east, with Mercury becoming visible beneath them closer to sunrise. <\/p>\n
Saturn is high in the south, with Neptune just above. Uranus is high in the southeast, but like Neptune, requires a telescope to see. You don\u2019t need anything but your naked eyes to see this \u201cplanet parade.\u201d <\/p>\n
Joining the \u201cplanet parade\u201d all week is a waning crescent moon, which will get slimmer on each successive morning and pass close to the Venus, Jupiter and Mercury later in the week. <\/p>\n
Mars is the solitary planet left in the evening sky, so isn\u2019t part of this \u201cplanet parade.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sunday, August 17: A \u2018Planet Parade\u2019<\/p>\n
StellariumThis Week\u2019s \u2018planet Parade\u2019 Schedule<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what to expect this week as the \u201cplanet parade\u201d peaks:<\/p>\n
Surprising Fact<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll hear the erroneous term \u201cplanetary alignment\u201d used to describe this event, along with advice about seeing six planets despite only four being visible to the naked eye. Stargazers prefer \u201cplanet parade.\u201d That\u2019s because the planets aren\u2019t aligned in space \u2014 they just appear that way from our vantage point on Earth. The planets are spread out, as they always are, along the ecliptic \u2014 the plane of the solar system. If you think of the solar system as a fried egg, with the sun at the center, the planets (including Earth) orbit in a circle around it. If planets were truly aligned, they would all appear as a single point of light as seen from Earth. Alignment in astronomy typically refers to syzygy, such as an eclipse, which does not apply here.<\/p>\n
Big Numbers<\/p>\n
Though these planets appear close in the sky, they\u2019re separated by staggering distances. Venus is around 118 million miles (190 million kilometers) from Earth this week, while Jupiter is almost five times farther at 548 million miles (882 million kilometers), with distant Saturn 888 million miles (1,430 million kilometers). Mercury, the closest, is about 80 million miles (128 million kilometers) away. A \u201cplanet parade\u201d is purely a line-of-sight phenomenon.<\/p>\n
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took this image of Saturn on 22 Sept. 2022. <\/p>\n
SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC) IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)What\u2019s Next In The Night Sky<\/p>\n
The \u201cplanet parade\u201d will come to an end around Aug. 21 when Mercury slips into the sun\u2019s glare, leaving only Saturn, Venus and Jupiter on show. However, it will be worth taking a look early on Aug. 31, when Venus will meet the Beehive Cluster in the early morning twilight. The next sky highlight \u2014 particularly for those with a backyard telescope \u2014 is Saturn at opposition on Sept. 21, 2025. With Earth between Saturn and the sun, the ringed planet will appear at its largest, brightest, and best in 2025, visible from dusk through dawn. <\/p>\n
Further ReadingForbes\u2018Planet Parade\u2019 Myths Debunked And How To Truly See It \u2014 By A StargazerBy Jamie Carter<\/a>ForbesYour Ultimate Guide To Meteor Showers And The Perseids \u2014 By An ExpertBy Jamie Carter<\/a>ForbesNASA Urges Public To Leave The City As Milky Way Appears \u2014 15 Places To GoBy Jamie Carter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Topline For five consecutive mornings, beginning on Aug. 17, early risers will be treated to the sight of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3863,17172,55909,120081,120079,120078,122709,120080,120077,70,16,15,20630],"class_list":{"0":"post-345691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-full-moon","9":"tag-jupiter","10":"tag-mercury","11":"tag-moon-and-planets","12":"tag-planet-alignment","13":"tag-planet-parade-2025","14":"tag-planets-alignment-when","15":"tag-planets-august-2025","16":"tag-planets-tonight","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-venus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115031031460011217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}