Pick any day from the year 1000 to 3000 (your birthday, the Moon landing, the year 2100) and see exactly where every planet was or will be. Then press play and watch the solar system turn, one day at a time.
📅 Pick a Date
Closest planet to Earth
Evening sky (after sunset)
naked-eye planets far enough from the Sun to see
Morning sky (before sunrise)
naked-eye planets far enough from the Sun to see
Body
From the Sun
From Earth
Light takes
In Earth's sky
Positions come from NASA JPL's published orbital elements, which track the real, slightly oval orbits to within a fraction of a degree from 1800 to 2050. Farther from that window they drift slowly, so centuries away treat them as close but not exact. The Moon uses a standard short formula good to about half a degree. Positions are for midnight Universal Time (UTC) at the start of the chosen day, and dates before 1582 are shown on today's (Gregorian) calendar.
🧭 How to Read the Map
You're looking down from high above Earth's North Pole. From there, every planet circles the Sun counterclockwise, and so does the Moon around Earth.
The dotted line marked 0° points toward the March equinox, the direction astronomers use as the starting point for measuring positions around the Sun.
The map opens on the inner planets at true scale. Mercury through Mars are drawn at their real distances, and the outer planets are marked at the edge in the direction they lie. Switch to "All planets" to fit everything out to Pluto; that view squeezes distances, because Pluto is about 100 times farther out than Mercury and at true scale the inner planets would crowd into a dot around the Sun.
The Moon is drawn much farther from Earth than it really is. Its real distance, 384,400 km, would put it inside Earth's dot. The direction is right, though: when it sits on the far side of Earth from the Sun, it's a full moon.
🔁 Why the Planets Never Line Up
Each planet runs its own lap at its own pace. Mercury circles the Sun in 88 days; Neptune takes 165 years. Press play and you'll see the inner planets sprint while the outer ones barely creep.
Headlines about a "planetary alignment" or "planet parade" usually just mean several planets are on the same side of the Sun, so they show up along the same arc of the night sky. A true straight line never happens: the orbits are tilted a few degrees to each other, and the odds of all eight landing on one line at once are effectively zero.
The pace differences also set how often planets meet. Earth laps Mars every 26 months, which is why Mars looks brightest and why Mars missions launch on that same rhythm. Jupiter comes around to face Earth about every 13 months, and Saturn every 12.4 months.
🔵Neptune was discovered in 1846 and didn't finish its first full orbit since then until July 2011. In the same stretch of time, Mercury went around the Sun about 684 times.