A good time to chuck the scope

[blusky]

So it appears there will be hardly a planet to watch in the evening between Sep and Dec 2012

[todd8137]

hi apart from Uranus,Pallas Neptune,Juno,Jupiter Ceres Vesta just fast forward stellarium to those months,and see they are a challange apart from jupiter of course.

[estwing]

i found "the planets today" useful..sorry can't link, me thick!

[Stephen]

As great as they are, I never seem to find the effort to spend "long" periods of time on the planets.

There's a whole universe of DSOs out there to find though!

[lukebl]

So it appears there will be hardly a planet to watch in the evening between Sep and Dec 2012

Crikey. There are only 3 planets which look much in an average telescope anyway, so you're rather limiting your astronomical experience if that's all you ever want to look at!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

As great as they are, I never seem to find the effort to spend "long" periods of time on the planets.

There's a whole universe of DSOs out there to find though!

Absolutely, though they can suffer from LP. I must say, in my case, I have found the LP problem less severe than I had initially thought. I always thought planets would have to be the main observing focus in my suburban back garden. Many very productive DSO session in the last year and a half have proven that wrong. Planetaries and open clusters in particular are good targets even with LP, and I have spotted over a hundred galaxies as well.