Space junkies, rejoice! All your favorite planets will appear in the firmament on both Dec. 28 and Dec. 29.
And by favorite planets, I mean all the planets. Before this year ends, night watchers can enjoy the rare sight of all the solar system’s biggest extraterrestrial bodies.
For most of them, you won’t even need a telescope. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will all be visible to the naked eye at the same time on Wednesday, Dec. 28 and Thursday December 29.
As for the remote planets — Uranus and Neptune — hobbyist astronomers can see them with the help of a pair of binoculars or a decent telescope.
If you’d like a guide to help you find these far-flung spheres, the Virtual Telescope Project is hosting a free “grand tour”. The livestream kicked off at 12:30 pm EST (17:30 GMT), and we ExWeb space nerds are so nice, we embedded the video below.
For a more old-school explanation, the five planets visible without a telescope will appear on the southwestern horizon, Space.com reported.
As the solar system’s smallest planet, the mercurial Mercury might be difficult to see. It’s more likely to appear in the darkest sky conditions possible, so a short trip away from the bright lights of the city will help.
These grand tours of the galaxy occur every one to two years. But for space lovers, it’s an opportunity to be reminded of the vastness of the universe, and humanity’s small place within the broader tapestry of space and time.
Perhaps Gianluca Masi, an astronomer with the Virtual Telescope Project, put it best:
