Planet viewing

[milkyjoe]

Apologies if this is a silly question, but when are the planets visible during sociable hours say mid to late evening (preferably before 12am! ) ?

Thanks.

[knobby]

Jupiter will be about 35° up in Feb 2015

[milkyjoe]

Thanks knobby, but what about Saturn?

[Paul73]

You can catch Uranus and Neptune from 10pm now (dependent on your horizons). You'll have to wait until Jan for an early Jupiter. Then Spring for Saturn. To be fair, all of the other planets are a bit rubbish next to these two show offs.

Plenty to look at before then.

Paul

[ronin]

Saturn and Mars hit the Western horizon at 21:00, so that puts them out of just about all sensible reach.

Will say I half suspect that Stellarium assumes that the time is GMT so if you have a LOW horizon to the West you may manage something. But I do mean what is effectively a horizontal view West from somewhere.

Jupiter appears on the Eastern horizon at the end of December, sort of just gets above the Eastern horizon at 21:00 December 23rd.

So other then Neptune and Uranus which will be very "star" like and not easy with no detail, you are basically stuck until effectively the start of the new year.

Easy option is in Stellarium view to the West and see what planets are visible on the ecliptic at say 21:00 or 22:00, just advance the time,

You can then move to the Eastern horizon and advance the date/time to see what planets are rising for whatever you consider a sensible time.

In effect planets are out of it for the next 3 possibly 4 months.

[ghostdance]

Yep, they get pretty antisocial for awhile. Selfish planets!

But, we get Orion and the Pleiades/Hyades in compensation so that's not so bad

[Moonshane]

this is a good site http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/ and if you look where they are (which area of the sky) and use a cheap planisphere you'll see when they are in the right area of sky for your observing site.

[uhb1966]

Dear milyjoe, if you have access to a computer, i would also suggest you get the free stellarium software, if you have a smartphone, i suggest the free celestron app :-) so you can check every evening for interesting o jects!

[milkyjoe]

Thanks for the tip uhb1966. I'm using StarTracker from the Google Play store.