On the morning of June 3, look to the East. Just before sunrise, you will get six out of seven planets nicely aligned. Venus will be a bit too close to the Sun to be visible before the Sun appears. The alignment will give you great views in the order Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars, Neptune, and Saturn. And for good measure, you will be getting a Moon crescent too, just near Mars in the sky.
Uranus and Neptune can’t be seen with the naked eye so you will need a telescope or high-powered binoculars for that. If you care more for the presence of planets than their arbitrary alignment, then any day is now good to see Venus too before it gets too close to the Sun. But hurry! If you look tomorrow or the day after, the order will be slightly switched. Mercury is currently not very near the Sun, and while its maximum elongation is months away, the littlest planet is clearly visible.
Since we are approaching the summer solstice, there are places in the Northern Hemisphere where dawn will be in the middle of the night (maybe do not go to sleep?) or will require a very early rise. So do not worry if you miss this one. Planetary alignments of this type are not extremely rare.
The eight planets all orbit the same plane in the Solar System (plus or minus a handful of degrees), so they often end up in this kind of alignment. They do orbit at different speeds though, so there is the occasional switch between who’s on one side of the Sun or who’s on the other. Alignments of three or four planets are fairly common.
Six is a bit rarer, but you can have multiple days in a calendar year where at least six are visible in the night sky. Venus and Mercury move pretty quickly around the Sun, so they do get round again. Although the other planets might have stretched to the other side of the celestial vault by then, it is a long arc that connects the planets.
If you are not particularly a morning person, worry not. A seven-planet alignment is coming next year, best seen in late February 2025 after sunset!
Source Link: See A Wondrous Parade Of Planets In The Sky Next Week
