The seven wandering classical planets—including the Moon and the Sun—line up in the sky this month. Find out where and when to spot the planetary alignment.

The Wanderers Align

The classical planets—the seven astronomical bodies that can be seen without a telescope, and appear to move in relation to the stars—are coming into an eye-catching alignment.

Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will line up in order of their distance from the Sun in the pre-dawn sky from June 23 to 25.

The graphic at the top of this page shows the view from New York City about 45 minutes before sunrise on June 24.

The seventh classical planet—the Sun itself—makes its presence felt in the form of a reddish glow coming from just beneath the horizon.

The word planet originally comes from an ancient Greek word meaning “wanderer”, to distinguish it from the “fixed” stars. (Some sources include Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto in their defini tions of the “classical” planets, although these bodies were not discovered until after the invention of the telescope in the 17th century.)

The best recommendation is to seek out an unobstructed view of the eastern horizon about one hour to 30 minutes before local sunrise. The last time we saw a conjunction of the five brightest planets was in December 2004. The next planetary alignment will not occur until the year 2854. According to astronomers, such alignment typically occurs every 1500 years, with the last phenomenon appearing in 561 B.C.