Alabama skywatchers can see up to seven planets at once in the Earth’s skies. Even the moon will join the cosmic festivities.
Depending on the date, this unusual alignment includes either four or five planets that can be spotted with the naked eye in Alabama skies: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Each planet is bright enough to be seen even under light-polluted city skies but much better in darker rural areas of our state. The planets appear as bright points of light with Venus being the brightest and Mercury the faintest and hardest to see.
While the easiest to spot are those five bright planets, two others, Uranus and Neptune are also in play but are a bit more of a challenge to observe. These two planets will sit between Jupiter and Venus in the southwestern sky. They are both much fainter, so you will need binoculars to glimpse these two. They will appear as greenish-blue fuzzy points of light. A small telescope would reveal those giants at the edge of our solar system as tiny disks.
All seven planets and the moon appear strung along a line in Alabama’s skies because they follow a path known as “the ecliptic.” The planets always appear along the line of the ecliptic, though seeing four or five at once is uncommon and doesn’t happen every year.
It’s not all that rare to see multiple planets in the sky at once. While this planetary alignment is certainly a stunning sight, it’s not breaking any records in terms of how close they appear to each other in our sky. A more compact huddle occurred in the summer of 2022 across Alabama’s pre-dawn sky. While this parade of planets looks to our eyes to be huddled in the evening sky, they are, of course, spread out across a vast chasm of space across the solar system, separated from each other by millions of miles.
You can use the moon as a guide for a convenient guidepost. It will appear with a different planet from one day to the next.
The moon will meet with Mars on February 9, but keen eye-skywatchers will also notice that it will be joined by the bright twin Gemini constellation stars, Castor and Pollux.
Mercury will become easier to spot as it snuggles up to Saturn on February 24.
The most important advice to snag all seven planets, especially Mercury, in the last week of February, is to get a clear, unobstructed view of the low southwestern horizon 30 to 45 minutes after the Alabama sunset. Get your views in now as the planetary party won’t last long. By mid-March, the planets will begin to disband, some becoming hidden by the sun’s glare while others enter the early morning sky.
It’s amazing to think that when you look up at these planets, you’re peering into the vast expanse of our solar system. Each planet orbits the Sun at vastly different distances—Mercury sits about 36 million miles, while Neptune is at a stately 2.8 billion miles distant from our star. Yet here they are, all visible at once from our little perch in Alabama.
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at ZeiglerElderCare@yahoo.com.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
