A rare parade of planets will take place on a recent winter evening
During the parade, six planets – Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune – will line up in a single line. While the visual alignment of more than four planets gives reason to call the parade big, in fact it is not. Only four of the six planets – Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Neptune – will be represented in a narrow sector, with Jupiter and Uranus a considerable distance away.
When will the inhabitants of Moldova see it?
The parade of planets will be clearly visible about half an hour or an hour after sunset. In Moldova it will be possible to observe this phenomenon after 18:15 local time and until about 19:30.
The parade will not take place evenly. First Mercury and Venus will appear in the sky, then Saturn and Neptune, and Jupiter and Uranus will be the last to appear, but they will be visible longer than the others.
Parade of planets is a phenomenon in which more than three planets visually appear in a straight line on the same side of the Sun. To observers from Earth it seems that the planets are close to each other. This is due to the visual effect of the planets moving along the ecliptic, the Sun’s conventional path in the sky.
Parade Calendar
One major and two minor parades of planets are expected in 2026. The big one will occur on the morning of August 12, when Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune line up in a single line. The smaller morning parades will occur on April 18 and November 14.
The phenomenon of all the planets ending up on the same side of the Sun is very rare. The next such parade will occur on May 19, 2161.
