The eight planets all go around the Sun in the same direction and in nearly the same plane, but at very different speeds: Mercury takes 88 days, the Earth a year and Neptune 165 years. So their arrangement is always changing, and the planets are rarely lined up. The table below gives, for this very moment, each planet’s distance from the Sun and from the Earth, computed with the same models astronomers use for their ephemerides. In the 3D view the planets are drawn much larger than they really are; at true scale, they would be invisible dots around a tiny Sun.
Where are the planets right now?
Computing…
| Name | From the Sun | From the Earth |
|---|---|---|
| Mercury | … | … |
| Venus | … | … |
| Earth | … | … |
| Mars | … | … |
| Jupiter | … | … |
| Saturn | … | … |
| Uranus | … | … |
| Neptune | … | … |
Questions and answers
Which planet is closest to the Earth?
It changes: Venus comes closest of all, but on average Mercury is the nearest, since it never strays far from the Sun. The table shows today’s answer.
Do the planets ever line up?
Several can appear on the same side of the Sun, but never in a straight line, because their orbits are slightly tilted to one another.
Where the numbers come from
Values refresh every second in your browser; the published data are checked every 10 minutes and updated several times a day.