Reminder - tonight it is possible to see all planets tonight starting with Venus Mercury and Jupiter from 7:30 pm. Saturn and Neptune after dark and Uranus a tad later. Even Pluto if you have a BBT (bloody big telescope).
Ok Venus Mercury Mars Jupiter and Saturn - and the Moon - before the mozzies made me beat a retreat. Just using the 70mm refractor and my son had a good look, too. Too bitey to put the big scope out.
I returned to the Moon to finish off with a go at the Hortensius Domes, and while looking at Copernicus as the starting point, a satellite whizzed through the field of view! Just my second ever across-the-Moon satellite transit. And as much a thrill tonight as the first some 7 years ago.
Oh, and the Hortensius Domes were a easy to spot and so distinct from typical lunar mountains. Lovely cluster of volcanoes that unless you knew what it was you would just dismiss this lot as just mountains and not as shield volcanoes
This is the name given by my friends to the planetary alignment I found is happening right now - All eight planets plus the Moon and Pluto all up in the sky all at the same time. That's every major body in our solar system all visible at the one time.
This alignment is only visible for 30 to 45 min just after sunset for a couple of weeks centered around the 18th of October. This event will repeat itself two more times, at the end of April next year just before sunrise, and then again at the end of October start of November next year just after sunset once more. This very unique event won't repeat itself for several hundred years!
I started a thread detailing this event and the dates, with more specifics:
Tracked down all eight planets in the Massey Alignment today.
My western horizon precludes seeing Venus and Mercury down low. So, I solved this by completing these observations just after lunch in brilliant sunshine.
Mercury - very small bright white spot against blue background.
Venus - magnificent fine crescent. Jewel like against the blue background. It’s disc is so big and imposing at this stage of it’s approach to inferior conjunction.
I was enjoying this so, I kept going
Mars - still quite bright but receding quickly. A distinct, light red against the blue sky.
Jupiter - faint disc with main bands clearly visible.
Saturn - extremely faint. It took me about 5 minutes at the eyepiece before I found it. The rings were quite distinct.
I then spent some time enjoying mother Earth whilst waiting for night fall.
Neptune - obvious small light blue disc. The Moon was about 10deg away.
Uranus - the smallest of non-stellar discs was very clear. Hint of green.
Scope - Vixen NA140SS with LVW22 giving 36X for the daylight observations and LVW8 giving 100X for the evening observations.
Last edited by Tinderboxsky; 21-10-2018 at 10:07 PM.
Reason: Additional information
Steve I gather from Alex it was pretty much purely a chance observation one evening while farnarkling in either Sky Safari or one of the ephemeris applications.