Clear skies, cold still weather: good seeing. So, about half past six this evening, we looked for the planetary alignment. We saw (with the naked eye) faint Mercury close to the still faintly pink horizon, spectacular Venus dominating the western sky, bright Jupiter near the zenith, and red red Mars a little further round. Binoculars made them brighter, but still point like, except for Venus. I could convince myself I could see Venus’ phase, but it was so bright, it was hard to be sure.
Later, 8:30-9pm, it was much darker, and we used the big telescope. Venus and Mercury had set by then. Jupiter was lower down, but still visible: we could see all four Galilean moons, and some dark bands on the planet itself. Mars by then had moved close to the zenith. Last time we tried to view it at that angle, we couldn’t see through the finder, so we bought a 90 degree adapter for it at AstroFest a few weeks ago. It works! We got to see the red planet as a disc. Beautiful.
We had a quick look at the Pleiades, as they were in the vicinity. My god, it’s full of stars!
We then used the autofinder to try for Uranus. We could see a bright object near the centre of the field of view. It could have been a very small disc of a planet, or just a point source of a star. I choose to believe it was Uranus.
So, definitely four planets, and maybe even five.
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