Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
A RARE PLANETARY event which involves the alignment of six planets in a row in our solar system will be visible to the naked eye in Irish skies tonight, astronomers have said.
The celestial event, also known as a ‘Planet Parade’ or the ‘great planetary alignment’, will see the sky scattered with a number of visible planets – including Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Uranus and Neptune will also be visible through a telescope.
Resident astronomer for the Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork Danielle Wilcox told RTÉ Radio’s News at One that the planets may be visible for an “entire month” in Irish skies.
“We are very lucky – we’ll have the planets in the sky basically throughout the month of February,” Wilcox said.
Most people in the Northern Hemisphere will be able to see the planets for the next four weeks.
“It’s really nice to have the planets in the sky, we don’t always have so many at one time, Wilcox said.
“This evening, will have four of the planets visible without a telescope or binoculars – you’ll have Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars all across the sky.”
Astronomer Danielle Wilcox told RTÉ Radio that the stars will be visible from late this afternoon.
“You don’t need to be out super late to see them, you can go out just after sunset and you’ll be able to see four planets without any sort of equipment,” Wilcox said.
Planet-gazers are advised to look to the south, where four of the planets will progressively appear. Venus will be the first planet visible, and will be the “brightest object in the sky” after the sun and moon.
“Just as the sun is setting down, one of the planets you’ll be able to spot quickly will be Venus. It will be so incredibly bright, you’ll see that one before the stars even come out,” Wilcox explained.
“Following this, Saturn will appear right next to Venus in a south-west direction. Then if you turn towards the south and look slightly south-east, you’ll see Jupiter, and further east, you’ll see Mars. Once they are all visible, the planets will stretch across the southern sky from west to east”.
Wilcox added that those with telescopes at home should also be able to spot two other planets, Uranus and Neptune.
“They’re a bit farther out as they’re the edge of the solar system, so they will not be visible to the naked eye, but if you have a good telescope, you can look in the same direction to see them,” Wilcox said.
“They’ll be in the same line as the rest of the planets, but you do need to have a bit of experience with the telescope to be able to spot those two,” she added.
Wilcox went on to explain that the final planet in the solar system, Mercury (sorry Pluto) may also be visible on “particularly clear evenings”.
“We’ll hopefully get some good skies towards the end of February, because Mercury will be popping up above the horizon as well, which will give you an additional planet in the sky. It looks like around the 27th will be the best time to see Mercury,” she said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Like our lot here they’ll do anything to stay in power.
@Dave O Neill: “Our lot” have maintained a successful economy
@Argus Romsworth: They have. But where they have failed is they have now adopted the UK’s policy of mass immigration to try and chase the value of money that continues to drop year on year. House prices will go up indefinitely, because software engineers and Deliveroo drivers won’t be building houses. Our young tradees are hitting for Australia and NZ. The Irish, Romanians, Georgians and Moldovans who currently dominate the construction workforce can’t keep up with 100,000 + coming here every year. How much has people’s wages gone up in the past 10 years? Maybe 10-15%. Housing has gone up almost 80%. But let’s keep supply low and the demand high, that will surely fix the problem.
@Joe Willis: housing a big issue. No doubt about that. it’s the same in Australia. When Irish go over there as they rarely buy a property.
@Argus Romsworth: Yes because mass immigration doesn’t benefit the economy. Just ask the Australian government why they have had mass immigration for over two decades, yet they skill shortage is at the highest it has ever been right now.
@Joe Willis: the highest value skills are not in construction atm. ICT and financial sectors where all the big money is. Make hay while the sun shines. Just a part of the cycle we are in.
@Joe Willis: Garbage. We follow the EU policy according to our commitments, no relation whatsoever to UK situation. The majority of our immigrants in areas such as health care and construction are badly needed and add hugely to our economy and our culture. Next time one of your family members is ill thank your lucky stars we have very well qualified immigrants looking after them.l because there is not enough Irish to fulfill our needs.
@M Fahy: Just keep bringing them in. Last year we had 100,000 immigrants. This year let’s make it 200,000. The solution to our housing crisis is surely to just keep bringing in 100s of thousands of people who all need to be housed. Just keep em coming. All people are anyways are interchangeable economic units. As long as our GDP rises by 0.2%, that’s all that matters. As for culture, I don’t care about that. Values is more important to me. I don’t agree with how a lot of these people value certain members of our society.
@Argus Romsworth: they’ve also maintained the homeless crisis
@Argus Romsworth: successful for who?
@Joe Willis: 90,000 people came here from Ukraine which obviously skews the figures.
For anyone who thinks Ireland should leave the EU, take a look at what is happening in the UK right now. This is our future if we were to leave the EU
@Ger Whelan: Switzerland, Norway and Iceland are all doing grand
They are lucky like us that they don’t have SF in power either.
@Trump24: How could SF be ‘in power’ in Britain?
@Trump24: not this munt again. Go to bed mate nobody wants to hear what you have to say about anything.
@Brendan O’Brien: The Trump supporter political I.Q. level.
@Robert: So mute him and all the other trolls
Great to see the empire falling apart.
@Jb Walshe: The empire is long gone.
@Jb Walshe: the British Empire fell directly after WW2, just like the rest of Europe. The real winners were the USA and Israel.
@Joe Willis: unfortunately they are still heavily involved in many countries
@Jb Walshe: US giant Meta has 3.3 Billion users worldwide everyday on their platforms. That’s at least half of the worlds adult population. They have mastered data collection of all these users. If Chinese company ByteDance doesn’t sell TikTok to an American company by January 19th 2025, TikTok will be banned the the US. The likelihood is that ByteDance will sell TikTok for a huge sum of money to the US. Just shows that if the US doesn’t control what people use/see on their phones, they will throw toys out of their pram until they get their own way.
Britain have billions for bombing innocent Palestinians but no money for pensioners fuel allowance
@Kevin O Brien: Keir Starmer is the Prime Minster of the UK. His wife, Victoria, is a jew with UK-Israeli citizenships. Do things start to make a bit more sense now?
Incredible how ministers hedge their bets and rely on the global economy to come right and sound bites to appeal to voters. UK needs higher taxes on the rich, and a good dose of re-privatisation. Then suck it up for a few years.
Great Britain is now little Britain and looks like it’s getting littler,
@Ned: Yeah, Luke Littler.
Labour and the Tories are just as bad as each other. Both repeatedly lied to the British public about not raising taxes and then they proceeded to do so. The Tories were responsible for hiking taxes up to the highest amount in nearly 50 years and then Labour continued the pile on once they entered office despite running on the promise not to raise a single tax and using the National Insurance, corporate tax and income tax increases as a stick to beat the Tories with. The elephant in the room that neither Labour nor the Tories want to talk about is the NHS and how it’s the biggest drain on government finances. Funding has nearly doubled since 2015 yet 40% of people waited longer than 12 hours in A&E and the surgery waiting list stands at 7.8 million people. It needs to be privatised.
@William Jennings: do you work for Boris?
Lived in London in the 90s . Seemed like we’d never have it as good here as they had it then . The place was ransacked by city bank speculators , war mongers, and anti eu sentiment . A good honest people brought to their knees by that collective shower. Hope for better times for them again soon
have your say