Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and the waning Moon will line up on one side of the Sun at dawn on Wednesday, August 28. The conditional parade of the planets will occupy a sector of the sky within the limits of about 160 degrees, the press service of the Moscow Planetarium informed TASS.
In August, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn will be visible from midnight to dawn. At the end of the month, Mercury begins to appear in the morning sky after 04:00 Bulgarian time, and on August 28, they will be joined by the crescent of the waning Moon, which will be close to Mars. They will all be east (right) of the rising Sun.
If the weather is clear, some of the participants in the parade will be visible with the naked eye, and the rest – with powerful binoculars or a telescope. The planetarium called the August parade tentative because the planets would be in too large a sector.
“In astronomy, there is no clear criterion for the ‘closeness’ of planets, so the term ‘parade of planets’ has a qualitative character”, the organization further specifies, recalling that this concept is not scientific and is used to popularize astronomy.
A parade of planets is observed when several planets visible to the naked eye are close enough to each other that they are visible (or not visible if they are close to the Sun) in a narrow (20-30 degrees) sector of the sky. A grand parade of planets is observed when five or more planets are brought together in this way.
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