If you're on social media, by now you've probably seen the breathless announcement of a planetary alignment on January 25, 2025. These videos claim all eight planets will be in a line on one side of the sun and visible in our nighttime sky. Is it true? Nope. But there will be six planets in our evening sky in January. And yes, they're in a line ... like always.
The planets orbit the sun on a plane we call the ecliptic, so they are always roughly in a line. It's just that some planets are usually in the evening sky, while others are in the morning sky, and still others might be too close to the sun to see. Plus, Uranus and Neptune require optical aid to spot. But in January, all the planets but Mercury will be in the evening sky soon after dark.
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So what will the sky look like on January 25, 2025? Below you'll find a view of the sky with the planets as seen from mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. And you'll also see what that view looks like from the point of view of someone hovering in space above our solar system. While the planets are in a line from our perspective, they are not in any magical line stretching out from the sun. And Mercury isn't even visible.
Below you can see that while six of the planets will be visible in our sky and appear in a line, that doesn't mean they are all lined up stretching from the sun. Not even close!
You'll be able to see six planets in the evening sky for the whole month of January. Start in the west, where the sun has just set. As the sky darkens, you'll spot Venus easily, because it shines brighter than any star. At the beginning of the month, golden Saturn is not too far above Venus. These two planets will keep getting closer together, until they meet up around January 17 and 18. After that, Saturn will be closer to the horizon and Venus will be higher in the sky.
The other two planets that you can see with your eyes alone are Jupiter, which will be bright and high above the southern horizon, and Mars, which is reddish and will be rising in the east soon after dark.
Spotting Uranus and Neptune is much trickier, because you'll need to use binoculars. But if you've identified the first four planets, you can see they trace a rough line from one horizon to the other. And Uranus and Neptune will also be along that line.
In the general vicinity of Jupiter, you'll see a fuzzy cluster of stars in Taurus the Bull ... that's the Pleiades. And Uranus is not too far away. Try using Stellarium to pinpoint Uranus with the time and location you're observing from.
Neptune, though dimmer, might be a bit easier to find at the moment. That's because it's hanging out near bright Venus and Saturn. In fact, on January 29 and 30, Neptune will be just a few moon-widths to the side of Venus.
So where's the outlier, Mercury? Mercury is close to the sun in the morning sky in January. And while Mercury will move into the evening sky in February, Saturn and Neptune are departing, so they will pass each other in the glare of sunset. Technically, by the end of February, all seven planets will be in the sky at once. But Neptune will be impossible to see so close to the sun, and Mercury and Saturn will be challenging.
While we aren't going to have a great planetary alignment in January with all the planets strung out on one side of the sun, the planets are always basically in a line. And not just the planets, but the moon, too. You can see this line in January as you watch the moon pass from one planet to the next, night by night, following the line across the sky we call the ecliptic.
On January 3, 2025, the crescent moon is close to Venus. By the next evening, January 4, you'll find the crescent moon closer to Saturn. By January 5, the moon has passed Neptune. On January 9, the moon has passed Uranus and is among the stars of the Pleiades star cluster. And by this date, the moon's phase has grown to a waxing gibbous, so it will be bright and wash out the stars of the little cluster unless you're using binoculars or a telescope.
On January 10, the moon is alongside Jupiter, still tracking the ecliptic. And by January 13, the full moon cozies up to Mars in the east.
Because the moon and planets all travel along the same path as each other, the moon can occasionally pass right in front of a planet in what astronomers call an occultation. In fact, at 17 UTC on January 4, the moon will pass in front of Saturn for observers in parts of Africa, Europe and Greenland.
And then again at 4 UTC on January 14 (10 p.m. CST on January 13), the moon will pass in front of Mars for observers in parts of North America, northwest Africa, the Azores and Cape Verde Islands.
Sometimes you'll see the term "great planetary alignment" tossed around at the idea that all eight planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - are in a line on one side of the sun. When will that happen? The answer, apparently, is never. In Jean Meeus' book Mathematical Astronomy Morsels, he said our eight planets will line up to within 3.6 degrees of sky every 396 billion years. The sun is currently about 4.6 billion years old and will bloat into a red giant some 5 to 6 billion years from now, swallowing the inner planets in the process. So, no, we'll never get to see it.
Instead, we can appreciate the times when we get to see bright planets lined up together in the sky, and January 2025 is one of those times!
Bottom line: You've heard the internet rumor of a great planetary alignment on January 25, 2025. So what's true and what isn't? Find out here.