Which planets can you see with your eyes?

How each one looks

Venus is the brightest point in the sky after the Moon, always near the Sun: in the west after sunset or the east before sunrise. Jupiter is next brightest, a steady creamy-white light. Mars is orange-red and changes brightness a lot from year to year. Saturn is cream-coloured and calm, bright but not dazzling. Mercury is the hardest: it never gets far from the Sun, so it only shows low in twilight for a few weeks at a time.

This winter and spring

From our sky table and astronomy-engine: in November and December 2026, Saturn is the evening planet, in the south after dark. Venus, Mars and Jupiter are morning planets before sunrise; Venus is at its farthest from the Sun in the morning sky on 3 January 2027. Mercury has its best morning showing around 20 November 2026, low in the east.

Then Jupiter is opposite the Sun on 11 February 2027 and Mars on 19 February: both are up all night and at their brightest of the year, rising in the east at sunset. Saturn slides toward the evening twilight in spring and comes back to opposition on 18 October 2027.

How to be sure it's a planet

Three clues: it doesn't twinkle much, it sits along the band of sky where the Sun and Moon travel, and it moves a little against the stars from week to week. Or tap "A planet" on Sky Tonight, which says which way to face and how many fists up.

With binoculars

Steady binoculars, braced on a fence or a car roof, show Jupiter's four biggest moons as tiny dots in a line, and they change from night to night. Saturn's rings need a small telescope.

Why the giants are so bright

Jupiter and Saturn are very far away, hundreds of millions of kilometers and more, but they are huge: Jupiter is about 143,000 kilometers across by NASA's fact sheet, more than eleven Earths. Venus is close and wrapped in bright white clouds that reflect most of the sunlight that hits them. Mars is small, so it is bright only when Earth passes close to it, as it does in February 2027.