Unleash the Titans

It must be time to unleash the Titans: five of the planets in our Solar System will align diagonally in the predawn night sky starting tomorrow, Wednesday, 20-Jan-2016, morning.

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will all be visible with the naked eye starting Wednesday, 20-January-2016 and lasting until about 20-Feb-2016.

The last time a planetary party like this happened was in 2005. It’s also slated to happen again later this year in August. Unfortunately, these are the only planets that can ever get together like this. Neptune and Pluto are too far away to ever be seen without a telescope, and Uranus can only sometimes be seen in the middle of a dark sky without any help.

While the full planetary alignment will only show up just before dawn, the event will get started long before that. Jupiter will rise 20160120 Unleash the Titansfirst in the evening; Mars makes its debut at midnight; and then Saturn, Venus, and Mercury appear respectively, according to EarthSky.org. Even if the weather’s too cloudy tomorrow, you’ll have a month’s worth of mornings to gaze upon this splendiferous sight.

This article first appeared in The Verge.
Feature image ©2016 Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

More article about this phenomenon:
EarthSky.org (technical details)
Accuweather.com
New York Times

[Ed: It will be possible to view all five planets again in the evening sky from about August 13 to 19, 2016 .]