Seven planets to be visible Friday night in rare cosmic alignment

A rare seven-planet alignment will take place Friday, with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all visible in the night sky at the same time.

Stargazers will be able to spot all but the outermost two — Uranus and Neptune — with the naked eye, although some, notably Saturn, will be too close to the Sun to observe for long.

Planet parades are good news for amateur astronomers, and also for space exploration, the BBC noted: Spacecraft gain speed by slingshotting around planets, stealing a little of the world’s momentum to boost their own. And NASA’s Voyager vehicles, the furthest human-made objects from Earth, used a once-a-century alignment to visit the four outermost planets in 12 years, rather than 30.