Mercury
The innermost planet never strays far from the Sun, so it is only ever seen low in twilight, for a couple of weeks around each greatest elongation.
Planets Visible Tonight and Planetary Events 2026
Which planets you can see tonight, plus oppositions, elongations and close pairings with the Moon.
Times shown in your time zone (showing UTC).
Planets tonight
Choose a location to see which planets are up from your city.
Upcoming planetary events
The planets, one by one
Venus
The brightest planet, unmistakable as the Evening Star after sunset or the Morning Star before dawn, swinging from one to the other every 19 months.
Mars
The red planet brightens dramatically every 26 months around opposition, when Earth overtakes it, and fades to a modest orange point in between.
Jupiter
The largest planet is the brightest starlike object after Venus and is visible for most of every year, with its four big moons in any binoculars.
Saturn
The ringed planet shines as a steady yellowish star; even a small telescope shows the rings, which appear edge-on every 15 years.
Uranus
Just at the limit of naked-eye visibility from dark sites, Uranus is an easy binocular target near opposition each year.
Neptune
Too faint for the naked eye, Neptune needs binoculars or a telescope and a finder chart, but it is up most of the night around opposition.
Reading planetary events
At opposition an outer planet is opposite the Sun, closest to Earth and visible all night. At conjunction it is behind the Sun and out of view. Mercury and Venus, inside Earth's orbit, instead swing between greatest elongation east, when they shine in the evening, and greatest elongation west, when they shine in the morning. A conjunction between two planets, or between the Moon and a planet, is simply the moment they appear closest together in the sky; the separation in degrees tells you how close, and anything under about two degrees fits in a binocular field.