Around January 21, six planets will gather on one side of the Sun. We will therefore be able to see them simultaneously in the night sky.Image: AP EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY
This Tuesday, January 21, 2025, the sky will be the scene of a spectacle called a “parade of the planets”. In other words, 6 planets in our solar system will be aligned.
Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus and Saturn will perform a little parade in our sky this Tuesday. However, it will not be possible to discover them all with the naked eye.. For Neptune and Uranus, you will need a telescope or powerful binoculars, explains the astronomy platform Starwalk.
Tips for a successful observation
It’s dusk which constellation is best seen – either in the morning or in the evening, shortly after sunset. In Switzerland, this will be the case on the days before and after January 21, a little after 5 p.m.
The ideal is to find a place with as little light pollution as possible. The planet Mars (magnitude -1.3) will then appear in the east with its reddish glow. It is the highest in the sky.
Magnitude: the apparent brightness of celestial bodies
As with stars, the luminosity of celestial bodies is expressed in magnitude. This is a logarithmic scale expressed in “mag”: the higher the number, the lower the apparent brightness will be. This depends on the distance from the Earth, but also on its size and its own luminosity, respectively on the light that the Sun reflects back to it. For comparison, the apparent luminosity of the Sun is -26.832 mag. An object with a magnitude of up to +6.5 mag is visible to the naked eye. The full moon shines at about -13 mag, the planet Venus at about -4.7 mag, the North Star at about 2 mag, and the Andromeda Galaxy at 3.5 mag.
The second brightest planet, Jupiter (mag -2.6), is located a little lower. On the western horizon, Venus (mag -4.7) and Saturn (mag 0,6).
-Another episode will occur next month: February 28, where seven planets will be aligned in the sky.
(Translated from German by Valentine Zenker)
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