Watch a Live Stream of All Seven Planets in the Night Sky Tonight

Feb 28, 2025

Matt Growcoot

A live stream will allow armchair skygazers to see all seven planets lining up for a rare planetary parade tonight from the comfort of their own home.

The Virtual Telescope Project will start live streaming today at 12.00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time (the video is embedded at the top of this page). Although it is called the Virtual Telescope Project, the telescopes are very real and are located in Manciano, Italy where there are dark skies.

Astrophysicist Gianluca Masi will host the live stream. “Such a parade happens from time to time and we wish to share this event with our friends around the world,” Masi writes in a statement.

Although there is a rare planetary parade happening in the night sky this week, spotting all seven planets is virtually impossible without some help; such as an app. And if you can’t make it outside then getting an informed tour from an expert directly into your living room will be a great way of witnessing the spectacle.

Masi explains that the reason Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are all appearing in the night sky at once is that all of the planet’s orbits are on planes not much different from Earth’s own orbit.

Speaking to the New York Times, Dr. Gerard van Bell, director of science at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, likens it to a vinyl record — think of the center as the Sun and the grooves represent the orbits of the planets spinning around it.

Here on Earth, our vantage point is on one of those grooves looking out across the circle. This week it just so happens that all the other planets are in exactly the right position to be seen from Earth.

The planetary parade will start as soon as the Sun sets, Mercury and Saturn will both be very low in the sky as the evening Sun fades. They’re likely to be the two planets that are most difficult to spot.

Panoramic night sky with labeled planets: Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, Neptune, Saturn, and Mercury. A silhouette of a tree is in the foreground, with city lights visible near the horizon. — Photographer Josh Dury had to work hard to capture all seven planets.

Of course for photographers, it’s an opportunity to get a unique image and one Josh Dury has already achieved from Somerset, England.

“The main challenge was to capture the planets closest to the Sun: Mercury and Saturn,” Dury told PetaPixel. “A high dynamic range image (HDR) had to be applied to one pane of the panorama on the far right.”