Six planets will be visible from Earth early in the morning

The solar system’s six planets—Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—will be visible more or less aligned in the night sky before dawn on June 3. According to NASA, this is an unusual phenomenon.

“If we were anywhere in space other than Earth, these planets would not appear aligned,” Alphonse Sterling, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a statement.

The alignment of the six planets occurs infrequently, depending on the orbit and position of each planet as viewed from Earth.

Despite this, the same approximate alignment of the six planets will be visible later this year in the pre-dawn hours of August 28 and again on January 18, 2025.

“It’s not unusual to see two or three lined up in a row, but six of them lined up like that is unusual,” the official explained.

The planetary alignments will likely be most noticeable 30 to 60 minutes before sunrise when looking east from a high, dark vantage point with minimal light pollution and an unobstructed view of the entire horizon.

The planets Mars and Saturn will be visible to the naked eye, while Mercury and Jupiter will also be visible near the horizon.

However, to add Neptune and Uranus into the alignment, you’ll need a powerful telescope or binoculars.

A six-planet alignment is more common than a full planetary alignment, in which all eight planets of Earth’s solar system appear to be approximately located on the same side of the Sun.

Taking into account all the factors involved, including the orbital plane, speed and distance of each planet, estimates indicate that it will take more than 300 billion years for this to happen.