Thanks Stephen and Shaun
Stephen, great link mate!
Shaun, Neptune and Uranus are not difficult to spot. Both can be easily found using binos, even under urban skies. From a dark site, Uranus is also visible to the naked eye, but it does also require a transparent sky. I've seen Uranus many times where I go in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and there were also fainter stars visible than Uranus.
What distinguishes both Neptune and Uranus is their distinct intense colour. Neptune an intense blue, Uranus a bluish-green. Don't bother too much to resolve a disk with either as both are really small, and no surface features can be made out either. You could use their disk to help distinguish them from surrounding stars, but you will require very, very good seeing conditions so that you don't have bloated stars to contend with.
Actually, thanks to you Shaun, I nearly forgot that I have another challenge, this time not just involving ALL the planets, but EVERY major body in the solar system that orbits the Sun. I'll make my next post about this. There's only a few days left this year from today's date (20th of October), and then two more opportunities to see the same next year, and then that's it for several hundred years:
The Massey Alignment! Read all about it in the next post!
