Rare Sight For Amateur Astronomers as Five Planets Align

Amateur astronomers are preparing for a heavenly treat from Friday as the five planets visible to the naked eye line up in order of their distance from the sun across the pre-dawn sky. From a report: For those who can face the early start, and have an unobstructed view of the horizon to the east and south-east, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, could all be visible before the faintest, Mercury, vanishes in the glare of sunrise. It is not uncommon to see two or three planets close together, but the five that can be spotted with the naked eye have not appeared in order, as viewed from the northern hemisphere, since December 2004.

"This is really cool," said Prof Beth Biller, personal chair of exoplanet characterisation at Edinburgh University's institute for astronomy. "We now know of many other stars hosting multiple planets. This is a rare opportunity to see the same thing closer to home, with all five 'naked eye' planets in our solar system visible at once." The planets of the solar system orbit the sun in a remarkably narrow plane, meaning that when viewed from Earth, they appear to lie close to an imaginary line in the sky called the ecliptic. The five planets will rise above the horizon in the early hours of Friday, though it may be hard to see them all until later in the month.

Otherworld

[Surak_Prime]

Does this mean everyone has to hold their guns upside down now?

Re:

[cayenne8]

Does this mean everyone has to hold their guns upside down now?

We already have idiots that try to hold them sideways to "look cool" rather than hit what they aim at...

Please don't give them any new bright ideas.

Aquarius

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It is the dawning of the age

What lens would you need for photographs?

[cayenne8]

I don't have a telescope...but have heard that longer lenses are the best for trying to photograph things like these.

For a canon system, what lens would ya'll recommend to maybe rent?

That date on the 24th sounds really interesting with all 5 planets and the crescent moon in the middle of it all.

Re:

[ddtmm]

A lot of people think you need really powerful lenses for astrophotography, which is true if you want to shoot nebulas and so on, but for something like this all you need is a fast semi-wide angle lens. The spread of the sky from Mercury to Saturn mid June will be about 90 degrees. You could use a 24mm lens with great results. Using a 24mm f2.8 lens, 20-30 sec exposure, at about 3200 iso should do it. You’ll need to experiment though. For an even more awesome spectrum of the sky try a lens in the 10-1

Re:

[cayenne8]

A lot of people think you need really powerful lenses for astrophotography, which is true if you want to shoot nebulas and so on, but for something like this all you need is a fast semi-wide angle lens. The spread of the sky from Mercury to Saturn mid June will be about 90 degrees. You could use a 24mm lens with great results. Using a 24mm f2.8 lens, 20-30 sec exposure, at about 3200 iso should do it. Youâ(TM)ll need to experiment though. For an even more awesome spectrum of the sky try a lens in the 1

Re:

[turp182]

The want the fastest lens you have (lowest F stop). And the darkest spot you can find.

I use a Micro 4/3 (MFT) 20mm prime f1.7 and I can capture the sky field in under 10-15 seconds. Body is a Pany G9.

No telephoto, grab the entire sky, you can crop.

ISO 1600/3200
AWB - 3200K
Manual focus to a bright star, lock focus, adjust aim.
Best exposure times. Stay below 25 seconds.

Practice for an hour to get your settings right (this is annoying, but so is hours of blurry time lapse). Fresh battery, then time lapse fo

It means ...

[PPH]

.. the monolith [blogspot.com] is about to bestow untold levels of intelligence upon humanity and we will all be able to think for ourselves rather than follow the mainstream media unquestioningly.

Re:

[Opportunist]

We are already quite capable of thinking for ourselves, it's just way more convenient to outsource this for a lot of people so they can free up attention space for sitcoms.

Re:

[Whateverthisis]

So maybe that's what the monolith is going to do; give us more mental capacity to both watch sitcoms and critically think, eliminating the need to outsource thinking to the mainstream media?

Earth?

[dinsdale3]

"the five planets visible to the naked eye line up in order of their distance from the sun"

Doesn't sound like the earth will be in the correct position here.

Re:

[Fly Swatter]

OMG!! That means it will be six! Just toss a rock in the air in the correct spot.

All that concentrated gravity!

[Caro Cogitatus]

Make sure you get a cat to lay on your important possessions so they don't drift away.

Uranus and Neptune, too

[digitect]

With a small scope (or 10x binoculars on a tripod in a dark sky) at the same time, you can also see Uranus half way between Mercury and Venus, and Neptune a third of the distance between Jupiter and Saturn. I strongly recommend finding Uranus with a small scope--it is brilliantly cyan-colored and round. Better than Saturn, I think.

Not technically visible, but extremely rare for all seven to be in the same quadrant at the same time with the Sun down.

And the Moon is about 1-1/2 hours behind the Sun if you want to get all nine objects.

(Pluto, is also up about 1-1/2 hours in front of Saturn, but just about impossible to find without a big scope, tracking, GOTO, super dark sky, etc.)

Don't be intimidated trying to find these. 10x binoculars with large 50mm lenses are fine, but a 4-1/2" or greater Newtonian better, and anything else larger and/or with tracking plenty. Plan ahead, find a dark sky, print a star map in reverse (background in white), maybe get a 650 nm red flash light, take a few friends and snacks, and have fun. Go out at 4:30am and find everything in an hour.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

It's the Third Rock from the Sun.

That's nothing

[nospam007]

You should see the professional astrologers.

Cos Professionals see this all the time ?

[greytree]

News for Nerds, ferdle werdle gerble.

Multi-pass

[RogueWarrior65]

The time is now.

SYZYGY

[Twisted64]

Ctrl+F "Syzygy" - no results, must post. No other real content, other than to say I was given this amazing word by Cixin Liu, but I don't remember which book.

Rare?

[The Evil Atheist]

Why, this scarcity is just what we need to base an international system of currency on!

Every week

[groobly]

Every week we have a new "rare sight" in the heavens. The rarest sight in the heavens is when there is NO rare sight.