Six of the solar system’s planets will line up in the sky for a rare spectacle. In the early hours of June 3 and 4, 2024, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus will appear in a straight line in an arrangement known as a planetary parade. Only Venus will not be visible – even Earth’s waning crescent moon will make an appearance. You can even see the near-Earth planets (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) in the sky with the naked eye. To see Neptune and Uranus, however, you will need to use a telescope or very powerful binoculars.
How often can you see 6 planets in a line?
Of course, it is not unusual to see several planets in the sky – this happens almost every day. They are usually not particularly conspicuous among the other stars in the firmament, at most perhaps due to a particularly noticeable flickering. A line-up of several planets, on the other hand, is much rarer – but also not a unique experience. A line-up of three to eight planets is called a conjunction. We are particularly familiar with these due to regularly occurring solar and lunar eclipses. A meeting of five or six planets, on the other hand, is called a grand constellation or conjunction. Incidentally, constellations with five planets are much more common than those with six planets.
There is an approximate rule of thumb for the frequency of this phenomenon: Thus planetary series of three planets occur approximately every year, four planets approximately every few years. Incidentally, a line-up of all the planets was last observed in the morning sky in June 2022. A historically significant, albeit less regular constellation occurred in the year 6 BC, when other planets joined the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. It is one of the celestial phenomena cited as an attempt to explain the Star of Bethlehem.
Incidentally, the planets in space are not really lined up in a row; this phenomenon results exclusively from our perspective from Earth. But that doesn’t make the spectacle any less interesting! You can see the line-up in the early hours of the morning – provided the persistent cloud cover over Berlin finally clears up a little!
