Five planets will make a rare conjunction in the skies starting on Friday, which may be among the rarest celestial events ever to take place. Stargazers will have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to view five planetary bodies in the sky from Earth at once when Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn align.
This won’t happen once more until 2040. In 2004, a similar planetary conjunction of five planets took place.
The planets will appear to be lined up one after the other in the sky above Earth because they all orbit the Sun in the same plane. They will all be rotating in separate orbits that are billions of kilometres apart from one another. The conjunction, which started today but will last until Monday, will be best seen in the early morning hours just before and just after sunrise.
The rare planetary conjunction will be most visible in the Northern Hemisphere between 45 and 90 minutes before sunrise. Take a high vantage and look very closely at the horizon in the east. To view the event with your own eyes, you must get up early before sunrise since as soon as the sun rises, it will block out the planets’ appearance.
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