No tight alignment tonight

When you read "the planets are aligning tonight," the writer almost never means what the phrase literally says. The planets are not queueing up in a straight line in three-dimensional space — they orbit at wildly different distances from the Sun on planes that don't quite match. A real physical alignment of even four planets to within a fraction of a degree in space happens on a timescale of millennia, not weeks.

What is happening, and what makes the phrase useful, is the projected alignment: from Earth's point of view, several planets are sitting on nearly the same line of sight along a slim strip of sky. That strip has a name — the ecliptic — and it's the same invisible arc the Sun traces during the day. All the naked-eye planets hug it because they all orbit close to the same plane.

A "planet parade" is a projected alignment — several planets sharing the ecliptic from our line of sight, not a physical line-up in space.

When two planets share the same ecliptic longitude to within a degree or two, that's a conjunction. When three or more naked-eye planets sit inside a 30–40° window, that's what everyone — astronomers, headlines and TikTok — will call a planet parade or alignment. Both are wonderful sights. Neither is dangerous, neither triggers earthquakes, and neither is astrologically meaningful. They are simply orbital geometry doing its job.

Tonight the tightest pairing from your location is Moon and Mercury, sitting 5.6° apart. No planet parade is under way — the naked-eye planets are spread too widely around the ecliptic tonight.