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Heads up - All planets visible in one night

Stu

By Stu
in Observing - Planetary

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Stu

Stu

Posted
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I saw this pop up on my calendar and checked it out on SkySafari, and it is correct. Well worth a go if skies are clear.......

Good luck!!

Stu

If conditions permit, and you have good views of the SW horizon, then January 13th/14th 2015 gives an opportunity to view all the planets and Comet Lovejoy.

On January 13th just after 1700 Mercury and Venus will be close together and VERY low on the SW horizon. Next move up a little to Mars and Neptune also in the SW. Then onto Uranus in the South and as an aside have a look for Lovejoy in the SE. Lovejoy will make a nice triangle with Alderbaran and the Pleiades.

Jupiter rises later in the evening followed by the Moon and Saturn before dawn.

This can be repeated over the next 3-4 days, before Mercury starts to fall below the horizon

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kerrylewis

kerrylewis

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Now have the five evening planets - I must confess to using goto for Uranus and Neptune but I was surprised how easy they were to see even though the skies are not quite dark yet. Now for a proper view! Then wait for Lovejoy followed by Jupiter and then get up for Saturn. Exciting!  

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Qualia

Qualia

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Went out early evening and viewed Mercury, Venus and Mars. Waited a little and caught Uranus and Neptune. Later in the night, did a little Jupiter viewing. The skies will be clear all night, but I've packed up...there's no way I'm climbing out of my warm bed to view Saturn :p

Good luck with that one, Kerry :grin:

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kerrylewis

kerrylewis

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Well - I did it! Saturn turned out to be the biggest challenge, not because of cloud but as a result of its position in relation to my surrounding roofs. I got up around 5.15 (and yes it was difficult) and the sky was mainly clear except for a few wisps of cloud. It was not particularly cold and no dew (a feature all night I'm pleased to say). However from my scope Saturn was still below my neighbour's roof. She was just visible from my slightly raised verandah (Saturn that is, not my neighbour) so I had an 'emergency' look with the bins in case cloud stopped play, but I wanted to see them all through the scope. However looking through the Telrad it seemed that she was going to skim along just below the roof lines. So - have to move the scope! Carefully removed the SCT from the mount, moved the mount and tripod about 2 feet and fitted the scope back on carefully checking that it was in the saddle OK. Lined the scope up - Saturn is still below the roof line! Brainwave - swivel the mount round and the scope to the 'wrong' side. Bingo! There she was  - but of course the tracking was all wrong and she was moving out of the FOV - and then although missing the roof she want behind a flipping chimney! Time to give up? No, I'd had one brief look but wanted more. So I flipped the scope back over to the correct side and made a cup of tea as I waited. Finally she rose majestically above the roof and into proper view. Seeing was pretty poor (perhaps all the heat coming from my neighbour) and there was never going to be any Cassini division or anything fancy but it was the best view of Saturn I've ever had! 

So from bright Venus in the twilight with its mate Mercury alongside to Saturn in the dawn, it's been quite a journey. I must be mad! 

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Pig

Pig

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Nice one Kerry,

I tried for Saturn also this morning but it is in just the wrong place for me due to rooftops. I must add that it has been a good 24 hours for astronomy albeit a little cold.

I also squeezed a little solar in yesterday afternoon, all in all very satisfying :laugh: Time for bed I think

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hgjevans

hgjevans

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I managed them all on Friday night/Saturday morning, though, if I'm completely honest it was a little bit underwhelming. Clear Outside suggested that the early evening would be cloud-free, and that although it would be pants later on, there might be a window of an hour or two from 5-7am the next morning when there would be some clear sky. So, it was on - at least theoretically. When it got to late afternoon on Friday it was obvious that conditions weren't going to be great, so to be fair my expectations weren't high, but I had to give it a go. I was hoping to view each one as clearly a disc, rather than just a point (as per my viewing of Mercury for the first time in binoculars a couple of days previously). As it turned out, the seeing was mostly awful, and transparency not a lot better. 

Venus and Mercury together at the start of the evening - both in the same FoV - was nice but individually, at higher power, it went like this:

  • Mercury - small ball of reddish-brown mush with a phase, low down and through a lot of poor quality air.
  • Venus - bigger, white-ish ball of mush with a phase, as above.
  • Mars - ball of reddish-brown mush, higher, but close to nextdoor's rooftop and central heating flue.
  • Neptune - higher, but still over rooftops, seeing was certainly better than for the others, but of course at only a couple of arcseconds it wasn't ever going to be much more than a steady blue dot.
  • Uranus - much higher, but now thin cloud was beginning to mess things up; not too bad though.

Mid-evening now, and cloud was set in for the night - my hopes of getting both Jupiter and Saturn now rested on the possibility of that clearer spell from 5-7 the next morning. And the only place I would have a chance of seeing Saturn low in the south-east was from indoors behind a double-glazed upstairs window. :-( Still, couldn't be helped, so I brought everything in and set up again in readiness. I did a very crude polar-alignment based purely on knowing roughly which way the house faces, but as it turned out it was just good enough. 

5:00am - alarm goes off and I stumble to the window. Not particularly promising - there was a lot of thin cloud and all I could see was two bright stars - Arcturus and Spica, it turned out. At the back window the moon and Jupiter (thankfully) were obvious through the cloud, so I went outside with my 60mm spotting scope and grabbed it:

  • Jupiter - three Galilean moons visible, two almost merging, and the main cloudbelts - definitely the best view of the bunch.

Then I had to wait, somewhat pessimistically. The clouds really weren't showing any signs of thinning, and at only about 10 degrees above the horizon there was a lot of them to look through. I sat at my desk browsing SGL threads, and occasionally looking round to see if there was any improvement. And at about 6am, suddenly there it was - just enough thinning of the cloud in just the right direction, and Saturn was there! I raced to get it in the finderscope before the cloud thickened again - got it just in time. And for the next twenty minutes or so I managed to track it in the eyepiece, appearing and disappearing through the cloud:

  • Saturn - an elongated ball of mush, with occasional moments of better seeing that just about revealed it as the ringed planet.

At no stage was it again visible to the naked eye, so I was really grateful that the alignment I did the previous evening had been just accurate enough.

So that was it - all boxes ticked. But as I say, a little underwhelming.

 

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Stu

Stu

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Well I had to fly to Barcelona to get the weather [emoji6], but just had some lovely views of Venus & Mercury set against a beautiful blue sky.

Venus looking brilliant white, and a hint of orange perhaps with Mercury?

I'm sure I will land in cloud at Heathrow so little chance of the others tonight [emoji20]

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Davey-T

Davey-T

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Well I had to fly to Barcelona to get the weather [emoji6], but just had some lovely views of Venus & Mercury set against a beautiful blue sky.

Venus looking brilliant white, and a hint of orange perhaps with Mercury?

I'm sure I will land in cloud at Heathrow so little chance of the others tonight [emoji20]

That's cheating  :grin:

Dave

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Stu

Stu

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I'm sitting under miles of cloud at the moment, but shortly after sunset I did get a lovely view of Venus and Mercury within 50' of each other. That will have to do, but I still feel pretty pleased with it.

They do make a fine couple don't they? [emoji3]

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stevend

stevend

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Well done for completing it. It is a shame that conditions were not perfect for Saturn, I am so glad I had the opportunity on the 6th/7th as the skies were so incredibly clear that night. It remains the only instance I have been able to see Mercury so far.

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Stu

Stu

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Well, I'm finally managing a binocular/naked eye version of this!

Mercury and Venus caught nicely first in binos then Mercury naked eye as the sky darkened.

Mars next, naked eye obviously but a bit of a struggle to get Neptune at mag 8.0, eyes weren't well adapted but got it after a little while and once it got a little darker.

Uranus was a relatively easy star hop once I got oriented.

So long as the skies stay clear, Jupiter will be easy and if I can be bothered to get up, Saturn likewise.

Forecast is not great though so will grab Jupiter as early as possible.

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