If you have yet to see late summer’s “planet parade,” this weekend brings a great chance. Mercury is on the cusp of disappearing — and may already be impossible to see from your location — but Venus, Jupiter and Saturn remain easy pickings in this pre-dawn parade. More elusive will be Uranus and Neptune, which require binoculars or a telescope to see. What is certain is that with Mercury sinking, October will be left with a five-planet show.
Look towards the eastern and southern night sky around an hour before sunrise, and you’ll easily see three bright planets, wherever you are on the planet.
Venus and Jupiter will be the easiest to find. Both are shining in the eastern sky, with Jupiter above and Venus below. They will be between 17-19 degrees apart, according to When The Curves Line Up, depending on when you look.
Saturn will be shining in the southwest. It’s approaching its annual opposition — the brightest it gets all year as Earth undertakes it — but it’s not nearly as bright as the two other easily visible planets. Venus will appear about 65 times brighter than Saturn, while Jupiter will shine about 11 times brighter.
Planet-rise and planet-set times vary, so use an online planetarium that displays location-specific data. This is crucial if you want to know if Mercury may be visible to you.
The next planet parade after this one will occur in October 2028, when five planets will be visible together, once again before sunrise.
Before sunrise on Sunday, Aug. 31, is a great time to see the planet parade because, in addition to the sight of three (perhaps four) planets visible to the naked eye, the stunning Beehive Cluster (also called M4) will be very close to Venus. It’s a rare event — but you’ll need (any pair of) binoculars to appreciate its 1,000 stars.
The moon is absent from the night sky during the parade this week. So, too, might be Mercury, depending on your location. The “Swift Planet” orbits close to the sun, so it only ever appears to be just outside of its glare, at the most. If it is visible just above the horizon, that will be about 45 minutes before sunrise. You’ll need a clear view of the eastern horizon.
September has a couple of eclipses, but neither is visible from North America. First comes Sept. 7’s total lunar eclipse, which will see the surface of the full corn moon turn a coppery reddish color for 86 minutes as seen from Asia, Africa and western Australia. Two weeks later, at the new moon on Sept. 22, a deep partial solar eclipse will be seen from the Pacific. For skywatchers in North America, a highlight comes on Sept. 19, when a slender crescent moon, a bright Venus and bright star Regulus gather together in a tight conjunction low in the east before dawn.