DES MOINES, Iowa — This month after dark, if you’re a sky watcher, you’ve perhaps seen Venus and Saturn in the southwest for the first couple of hours, with Jupiter shining brightly overhead and Mars rising in the east. These multi-planet viewing opportunities aren’t super rare, but they don’t happen every year, so it’s worth bundling up and checking out. If you’re a watcher of Today in Iowa, you’ve seen Megan Salois show you a peek at the planets from our Skycam Network.

These events are sometimes called “alignments” of the planets, and while it’s true that they will appear more or less along a line across the sky, that’s what planets always do. That line is called the ecliptic, and it represents the plane of the solar system in which the planets orbit around the Sun.

Venus and Saturn are headed for a super close approach Friday night. Remember, they’re really hundreds of millions of miles apart in space, so when you observe them, you’re staring clear across the solar system!  

Thanks to NASA/JPL for the information and graphics above.