AIKEN, S.C. () – A local astronomy group gathered Friday evening to see the “Parade of the Planets”.

The Astronomy Club of Augusta gave dozens of stargazers the opportunity to see the rare celestial event.

Many brought their own telescopes and had chairs set up for the beautiful view of the night sky.

Seven planets will be visible in the sky. Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Mars can be seen by the naked eye but you will need a telescope to be able to see Uranus and Neptune. Saturn is more difficult to see because of how low it is on the horizon.

Richard Cofer, Vice president of Programs for the Astronomy Club of Augusta, says, “It’s fairly rare that all of them are visible at the same time at night so we hope to enjoy some of those while they are up as well as whatever else people are interested in taking a look at.” 

Along with viewing the Parade of the Planets, members were testing out new equipment and had some amazing sights.

President of the Astronomy Club of Augusta, Neil Miller, says it’s important to have a clear view of the sky when viewing planets or stars.

“It gives you some perspective, the darker it is the objects that are fairly faint are going to show up easier, it’s going to be easier to find them. It also gives our newest members a chance to practice with learning the constellations, how do you go from a star to a planet, how do you tell if its a planet or not, so there’s a lot of things that we can help teach them and that’s what we hope to do,” Miller says.

Miller also teaches courses in in physics and astronomy and USC Aiken and says it never gets old to see and learn about our galaxy.

Miller says, “I think looking at any planet is fun, certain ones are easier to see and have more detail, more things going on, like Jupiter have 4 moons that you can see with just binoculars and it’s the same ones that Galileo saw back in the early 1600’s with his first telescope, so that’s always fun to kind of put it into the historical perspective.”

This planetary alignment will not be visible again until 2040.