All the planets in one night

[Pixies]

At the moment: Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all easily visible with the naked eye. Uranus and Neptune are high and can be seen with a telescope easily enough.

So - assuming that Mercury was visible, that means one could see all the planets in one night.

 

Mercury is at greatest elongation on 1 October - visible in the evening after sunset. So that looks like a good opportunity. How easy is it to find Mercury with binoculars? I've never tried. And how common is this situation (seeing all in one night)?

 

[John]

Binoculars are often the best way to see Mercury. Nothing fancy, 10x50's will do it just fine.

I don't know how often it can be done but one of my society members did it a few weeks ago.

 

[Pixies]

Looks pretty tight!

[Marvin Jenkins]

Oh no, not again! After enthusiastically spending all night out after Stu gave us a heads up on the last one, only for the clouds to roll in so I couldn’t see Venus and Mercury, I vowed never again.

Marv

[Pixies]

3 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Oh no, not again! After enthusiastically spending all night out after Stu gave us a heads up on the last one, only for the clouds to roll in so I couldn’t see Venus and Mercury, I vowed never again.

Marv

At least Mercury is the first thing to find and is in the evening. But looking at the above, week certainly be the hardest the see

[Stu]

4 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Oh no, not again! After enthusiastically spending all night out after Stu gave us a heads up on the last one, only for the clouds to roll in so I couldn’t see Venus and Mercury, I vowed never again.

Marv

Who, me? 🤣🤣
 

Simples!

Mercury looks harder now though, seems to set at a similar time to the sun. I think it is 3 degrees above the horizon when the sun sets, so with a low enough horizon you may just do it, with care of course.

[Marvin Jenkins]

Still not interested!

[Marvin Jenkins]

Solid cloud here anyway, thankfully or I might not have been able to resist.

M

[Pixies]

Don't worry - Mercury is at greatest elongation on 1 October. Plenty of timer to prepare!

[Pixies]

Did it!

Started early yesterday evening and bagged Jupiter and Saturn before they dropped too low. I felt I needed to use some kind of optics, rather than just naked eye, so grabbed my new Skymax-90 and checked them out before dinner.

Later that evening I got the dob out for the further planets. Observed Mars first, and was planning to do some sketching later as the forecast had been good for up to 1am. Then on to Neptune. I just found it but high clouds were coming over and I had to call a halt as things got worse.

However, at midnight the clouds were gone. So I found Neptune again - much clearer this time. Then Uranus, which was a little tricky to find as the moon was starting to wash out the sky for the initial star-hop. I thought I'd spend some time with Mars, but the seeing was pretty poor, due to high winds.

Then to bed with the alarm set for 6 ready for the inferior planets.

 

 

Up early for me. Snuck out with my 10x50 binoculars. Venus very conspicuous, but to find Mercury I needed to head down to the beach and try and roughly work out it's location using SkySafari. I managed to bag it around 6:20. Around 4 degrees from Spica, both visible in the brightening horizon.

 

That's the first time I've ever observed Mercury. It felt similar to the past summer's Neowise hunting, scanning the horizon with binoculars at the beach, A bit chilier now, though!

[Stu]

Well done! Sounds like you had to put some work in to get them all, very rewarding though! 👍👍

[Zermelo]

Has anyone done the Messier Marathon and seen all the planets, in the same session?
There must be some sort of award for that.

[Marvin Jenkins]

Well done Pixies. Great bit of opportunistic astronomy. With sessions like that it can go any way real fast. Good one Stu, I hope this thread keeps on rolling, you started something, I hope to finish on a personal level.

As to Messier in one night! Is that possible? I would say no as some of them are only on the horizon limit during high summer. Am I wrong? 

I know this is off topic to the planet challenge but I am 109 of 110 Messier objects just M68 in Hydra to go. No chance until early next year.

I will post a separate thread to the Messier question in Observing Questions.

Marv

[Zermelo]

17 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Well done Pixies. Great bit of opportunistic astronomy. With sessions like that it can go any way real fast. Good one Stu, I hope this thread keeps on rolling, you started something, I hope to finish on a personal level.

As to Messier in one night! Is that possible? I would say no as some of them are only on the horizon limit during high summer. Am I wrong? 

I know this is off topic to the planet challenge but I am 109 of 110 Messier objects just M68 in Hydra to go. No chance until early next year.

I will post a separate thread to the Messier question in Observing Questions.

Marv

In the spring, from northern latitudes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_marathon

[Gfamily]

12 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

In the spring, from northern latitudes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_marathon

I know Mercury's best evening visibility is in February, so it's a question of whether it is still reasonably possible to observe it a few weeks later, when it's good for the Messier Marathon.