A rare astronomical event occurred this week in which every planet in the solar system was visible in the night sky simultaneously for the first time since June.
“Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars could all be seen in that order in the northern hemisphere with the naked eye, starting from the south-western horizon and moving east,” Nadeem Badshah reports.
All eight planets appeared only 1.5 degrees apart on Wednesday night and were set to reach conjunction – their closest point – on Thursday at 2100 GMT, per Badshah.
“These nights, we can see all the planets of our solar system at a glance, soon after sunset. It happens from time to time, but it is always a spectacular sight,” Gianluca Masi, an astronomer with the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, told Newsweek.
According to Badshah, “Jupiter was not expected to be visible at around midnight. However, Mars was set to be visible all night after it rose in the east just before sunset on Wednesday and will appear red and brighter than most stars.”
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Mercury could be spotted close to the much brighter Venus despite being “the most difficult planet to see without magnification.” Badshah notes: “The rest of the planets line up eastwards, with Jupiter appearing brighter than all of the stars and high in the southern sky.”
According to experts, Saturn will be “a golden colour when it appears in the south-west after darkness falls each day until 2023”.
According to Badshah, “all five planets visible to the naked eye were lined up in the sky in the same sequential order that they physically orbit the sun – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – an alignment which had not occurred for 18 years.”
