Planetary alignment: Finding meaning in awesome wonder

As a rare planetary parade lights up the skies, Ivan Radford invites us to look up at God’s creation.

Where will you be later this week? And will you be looking up? Because on Friday 28 February, miles above our heads, something spectacular will be occurring: a rare alignment of seven planets in the sky.

It’s been an astronomical start to 2025 – literally. In January, it was possible to see at least four planets together with the naked eye – Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars were certainly visible from deepest darkest Suffolk, when I was gazing up after sunset. Uranus and Neptune were also there, but would have required a telescope to see.

At the end of February, though, Mercury joins the planetary party, meaning that all seven other planets will be technically visible at the same time. Depending on where you are – your own lighting conditions and cloud cover – you might only see a few planets, rather than the whole set. Neptune, Mercury and Saturn, in particular, will be very close to the sun and tricky to see.

But the hype around it is entirely justified: the next alignment of five planets won’t happen until October 2028, then February 2034 after that. For all seven at once again? You’ll be waiting until 2040.

Why? Because it’s very unusual for their different orbiting speeds to leave them appearing alongside each other. It’s like when two trains are briefly in sync on parallel tracks, except these don’t have wheels, are 4,000 times bigger and are floating in space.

It’s so easy to take the universe around us for granted, to keep our eyes on the ground and not remember that we’re on a tiny, pale blue dot hurtling around a giant ball of blazing hydrogen and helium at 67,000 miles per hour. Or that the Earth is 11 times smaller than Jupiter, or 9 times smaller than Saturn.

When you remember that, and gaze upwards – even just at the speedy glow of the International Space Station passing overhead – you remember just how small humankind is. How trivial our worries about what to wear today or whether we missed that train might seem by comparison.

And yet more incredible still is that these things do matter to God – that he knows, loves, cares about, listens to and walks alongside every one of us. Psalm 8:3 says: ‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars … what is mankind that you are mindful of them?’

The hymn ‘How Great Thou Art’ beautifully expresses that breathless thought: ‘When I in awesome wonder/ Consider all the worlds thy hands have made;/ I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,/ Thy power throughout the universe displayed.’ It goes on to remind us of the real jaw-dropping scope of God’s love: ‘And when I think how God, his Son not sparing,/ Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in.’ There’s only one word for it, to borrow an adjective from Professor Brian Cox: amazing!

While this coming Friday night will be a rare opportunity to see seven planets together, the brilliant reality of living in this solar system is that the planets and stars are around us all the time. March is good for admiring Mars, a partial lunar eclipse and, on Sunday 23 March, Saturn’s rings disappearing from view. April, May, July, August, October and December all promise meteor showers to marvel at. In September, there’s a lunar eclipse and Venus will hide behind the moon for a spell. And there are supermoons to dazzle in November and December. When was the last time you looked up?

Reflect and respond

• Reflect on Psalm 8 or the lyrics to ‘How Great Thou Art’. Praise God for his beautiful creation – and remember that it includes you.
• Every week this month, pause, turn your eyes to the stars and let the awesome wonder of God’s creation, and the sheer scope of his love, take your breath away.
• Visit rmg.co.uk/royal-observatory for a watchlist of celestial sights to keep you grounded in God’s love.