[okiscopey (Mike)]

Clear and cold around Kandos tonight, so time for a minor challenge: to view all of the seven other planets by eye or binoculars in one evening.
It wasn't too difficult. Mercury was near maximum elongation and easily visible by 6pm, with Venus, Saturn and Mars huddled together just above.

Neptune, Uranus and Jupiter were all picked up in the NE and E before 11pm (Jupiter had only just cleared local trees by then).

It was thus possible to view the lot within a four or five-hour span. Thanks to the IAU, I didn't have to find Pluto!

This minor exercise got me thinking. This is presumably not the shortest time period in which this can be done, but there can't be too many opportunities ... Mercury's so elusive and Uranus and Neptune have such long-period orbits.

Couldn't find anything on the web about this, and I'm not keen to run SN Pro forwards or backwards for many years to divine future or past 'bag-em-all' dates.


Anyone else done something like this, or care to comment?