Newswise — From Jan. 20 to Feb. 20,2016 people around the world who wake up just before dawn will be able to see five planets: Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — something that hasn’t happened for over a decade.

If you are covering this rare event and are looking for expert commentary, Stony Brook University Physics and Astronomy Professor Fredrick Walter is available. He also shares the following thoughts:

"The planets all orbit the Sun in a flat plane. Since we (on the Earth) are in that same plane, the planets all seem to move across the sky in a line (which we call the ecliptic). The planets all move along the ecliptic at different rates, and sometimes they end up on the same side of the sky. This happens every 10-20 years, when Jupiter catches up with Saturn. Mars, Venus, and Mercury move pretty fast.

In September 2040 the naked eye planets will all be within about 8 degrees of each other in the sky. Put it on your calendar! I've seen this once. In a dark sky with a clear horizon, it is stunning, because the planets are so much brighter than most of the stars. They really do trace out a line in the sky."

Professor Walter is a galactic astronomer. His research interests include novae, neutron stars, Solar and stellar activity (flares and coronal mass ejections, and their effects on the Earth), and the formation of sun-like and low mass stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets. He has been consulted about Mars and Pluto. He observes regularly, using observatories in Chile and Arizona, and is a guest investigator on the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray observatories.

***Bonus: Stony Brook University experts are now broadcasting live from our In the Know (ITK) Studios, powered by ReadyCam​ VideoLLink​ ​television studio system. The fully equipped​ ​Broadcast studios provides television networks remote access to our experts. For more information about the ITK Studios, visit www.bit.ly/1O8KY6W.