Five Planets and Moon in Alignment Visible This Week

Clear skies this week should allow stargazers a rare view of a planetary alignment.

The five planets visible to the naked eye, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, will be spread across the eastern sky in the hours just before sunrise over the next few days, aligned in order of their distance from the sun. The waning moon will also be a part of the alignment. The best time to view them will be about 45 minutes before sunrise on June 24.

The last time these planets clustered together all at once was in December 2004 and aren’t expected to do so again until 2040. The alignment should even be visible in urban areas with higher light pollution.

Uranus and Neptune will also be aligned in the same area, but their distance from the sun will require viewers to use binoculars or a telescope to see them. Mercury will only be able to be seen just above the horizon for a few minutes each morning until June 27.