Six planets \u2014 Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune \u2014 will appear in a dark night sky together for almost a week, beginning Sunday, Aug. 17. The fairly rare “planetary parade,” which is sometimes mistakenly called a planetary alignment, will continue through Wednesday, Aug. 20.<\/p>\n
The celestial gathering, last seen in February<\/a>, will appear in the eastern sky about an hour before sunrise. Although most of these planets have been visible in the morning sky for weeks, Mercury<\/a> will join the fray, bringing the planet count from five to six.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Under clear skies, you should be able to spot Venus<\/a>, Jupiter<\/a> and Saturn<\/a>. Mercury will be closer to the horizon but still bright enough to be seen by most observers. However, Uranus<\/a> (appearing between Jupiter and Saturn in the sky) and Neptune<\/a> (close to Saturn in the sky) are too dim and distant to be seen with the naked eye. The only way to see these two ice giants is by using a good telescope<\/a>.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Although it’s relatively rare for six planets to appear in the sky simultaneously, the beauty of the view will be vastly increased by the waning crescent moon.<\/p>\n Related: How to photograph the moon: Tips on camera gear, settings and composition<\/a><\/p>\n On Aug. 17 and Aug. 18, a crescent moon<\/a> will rise above Jupiter and Venus. The two brightest planets in the night sky are now slowly moving apart after an incredibly close conjunction on Aug. 12<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mercury may be visible below Jupiter and Venus, but it will be easier to see it on Aug. 19. On that morning, and on Aug. 20, a slim crescent moon will be very close to Jupiter and Venus \u2014 a visual highlight of the “planetary parade.”<\/p>\n By around Aug. 21, Mercury will begin to fall back into the sun’s glare and will become more difficult to see.<\/p>\n According to the Star Walk app, there will be two six-planet parades in 2026: one after sunset in February and another before sunrise in August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six planets \u2014 Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune \u2014 will appear in a dark night sky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-62621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}