What planets are visible tonight?

How tonight’s planets are worked out

The answer at the top is computed in your browser for the place you choose, with Astronomy Engine, an open source library tested against NASA JPL’s Horizons system. The tool follows every planet through the night in 10-minute steps and counts it as visible when it stands at least 5 degrees above your horizon while the Sun is at least 6 degrees below it, which is the end of civil twilight. NASA advises looking for planets at least a few degrees above the horizon and says 10 degrees or higher is best, because the atmosphere dims anything low in the sky.

The sky dome shows the whole sky as if you were lying on your back with your head to the north: the center is straight overhead, the edge is the horizon, and east is on the left. Move the slider under it to any time of the night, or tap a planet to see how high it is and in which direction to look.

The five planets you can see without a telescope

NASA lists five planets that are visible without optical aid: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Venus and Jupiter are usually the brightest; each row above gives the planet’s magnitude, where a lower number means a brighter planet. Uranus is at the limit of the naked eye under a very dark sky, and NASA recommends a telescope for it; Neptune always needs one.

Mercury and Venus orbit closer to the Sun than Earth does, so they never move far from it in the sky: they show up only after sunset or before sunrise, and they are easiest to see around their greatest elongation, when they stand farthest from the Sun. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune can sit anywhere along the ecliptic and are up all night around opposition.

Telling a planet from a star

NASA’s skywatching guide gives the quickest test: planets tend to glow with a steady light, while stars often flicker. Planets also stay close to the ecliptic, the dashed line on the sky dome, and they shift against the background stars from one night to the next.

What a planet parade really is

NASA points out that “planet parade” is not a technical term in astronomy. The planets orbit the Sun in a flat disk, and because we see that disk edge-on from Earth, the planets always appear along one line across the sky, the ecliptic. What makes a parade special is the number of planets on view at once: two or three bright planets are common, while four or five together happen every few years and last for weeks.

The events list above counts a parade when four or more of the five bright planets share the evening or the morning sky, each at least 15 degrees from the Sun. NASA expects five planets to be visible at once before sunrise in late October 2028, and those dates appear in the list as well.

Why planets seem to drift backward

From night to night a planet normally moves east against the background stars. NASA’s StarChild explains that retrograde motion is only an apparent change: when Earth, on its faster inner orbit, catches up with and passes an outer planet, that planet seems to slide west for a while before it resumes its usual direction. The tool marks every planet that is in retrograde motion on the date you are looking at.

Oppositions and close pairs

A planet is at opposition when Earth passes between it and the Sun. It rises around sunset, reaches its highest point around midnight and is closest to Earth for that year, which NASA calls the peak opportunity to see Neptune. A close pair, or conjunction, is when two planets, or the Moon and a planet, appear near each other in the sky. They are not physically close: they only line up as seen from Earth.

Common questions