RARE event! 5 planets in one line to be seen in skies tonight. How to watch

NASA scientist Bill Cooke told CBS News that the planets will be visible on March 28 and that the “alignment: will look “very pretty.”

What planets will be visible?

Reports have confirmed that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus will be visible on 28 March after sunset.

How to watch the five planets?

The five planets should be visible along the waxing crescent moon. 

Jupiter will appear brighter than Mercury. Venus would be the brightest planet among the whole group. Venus will be brighter to the upper left of Jupiter and Mercury.

Venus would be visible through the naked eye as it will dazzle the most among all the other planets. Uranus would be the most difficult to find without visual aids. Uranus will appear near Venus but very faintly.

Further, Mars will also appear very high in the sky and will have a noticeable hue.

“Wait until the sun has set and then go out and look low in that bright part of the sky where the sun has just set with binoculars, and you should see brighter Jupiter next to fainter Mercury,” said Rick Feinberg, senior contributing editor at Sky & Telescope magazine to NPR.

In order to see the celestial event properly, go to a location with as little light pollution as possible and a clear horizon with not obstructions. 

Once there, you should be able to spot most planets, apart from Jupiter and Mercury, without the use of binoculars.

Why do the planets align?

The conjunction between the planet occurs frequently in the solar system because, “the planets orbit around the Sun in approximately the same plane – the ecliptic plane – and thus trace similar paths across our sky,” according to NASA.

Is this a rare celestial event?

A true 5 planet alignment happened in June last year when Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn stretched across the sky from low in the east to higher in the south in the order of their distance from the Sun.

The planetary alignment in June was the first one in nearly eighteen years, with the last time being on December 2004. Such an event is not expected to happen again until 2040, according to NPR.