A rare planetary parade will be visible next week. Here’s how to watch the once-in-15-years celestial event

A rare celestial event will take place on February 28, when all planets in the solar system will be visible in the night sky for a brief moment. This marks the culmination of a planetary parade that began last month. Scientists have noted that such an alignment is uncommon and will not occur again until 2040.

What Is Planetary Alignment?

Astronomers define planetary alignment as a phenomenon where planets cluster on one side of the Sun at the same time. The alignment can involve anywhere from three to eight planets. A large alignment typically consists of five or six planets, with five-planet alignments being more frequent than six. Seven-planet alignments, such as the one occurring in February, are the rarest.

Unlike illustrations that depict planets in a straight line, they will not appear in an exact queue in the night sky. Due to their varying orbits around the Sun in three-dimensional space, planets rarely align in a perfectly straight formation.


NASA explains, "While it's true that they [planets] will appear more or less along a line across the sky, that's what planets always do. That line is called the ecliptic, and it represents the plane of the solar system in which the planets orbit around the Sun." NASA further adds, "This is, incidentally, why we sometimes observe planets appearing to approach closely to each other on the sky, as we view them along a line while they careen around the cosmic racetrack."

How to View the Planetary Parade

To observe this rare event, skywatchers should move away from city lights to an open area or elevated location. If the weather is clear, most planets will be visible to the naked eye, except for Neptune and Uranus, which require a telescope.

Mars will be visible in the east, Jupiter and Uranus in the southeast, while Venus, Neptune, and Saturn will be in the west. January featured the Quadrantid meteor shower along with a partial planetary parade, but February’s alignment is expected to be even more remarkable due to the rarity of the event.