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7 Planets Plus Pluto on the Same Night |
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Written by Ian Hargraves
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Monday, 03 November 2008 |
On Tuesday 2nd September 2008, four intrepid astronomers, Graham Curtis, Noel Clark, Bob Tollervey and Ian Hargraves from the Mid Kent Astronomical Society (MKAS) managed to bag 7 planets plus Pluto from an observing site at 8000ft just below Las Roques de Los Muchachos, La Palma.
Setting up for a night’s observing, we were in position to view the sunset at 19:35hrs UT (20:35hrs local time), a not to be missed experience. Soon after sunset, Venus became visible following the Sun down to the horizon. Over the next hour Mercury (at a greater angular separation from the Sun than Venus) and then Mars (almost vertically above Mercury) appeared out of the darkening sky, sandwiched between the Sun and the Moon in Virgo. All this time Jupiter and its four Galilean moons were visible in Saggitarius. At one stage, facing SSW it was just possible to sight Jupiter out of the left corner of my left eye and Venus, Mercury, Mars and the Moon out of the right corner of my right eye.
 From left to right: Moon, Mars, Porrima(top), Mercury and Venus – Photo by Noel Clark
After the Moon had set and the sky completely darkened we went in search of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto using a Meade 10” LX200 SCT. The telescope was controlled from a laptop running “The Sky 6” and was performing GOTOs absolutely spot on which made the search rather easy. Uranus and Neptune appeared as tiny disks of greenish and blueish light respectively. Pluto was a different matter but the scope placed it absolutely central in the FOV and when the starfield was checked against ‘The Sky 6’ it confirmed that the tiny pinpoint of very dim white light that we were observing really was Pluto. These observations together with the immediate landscape meant that we had observed all of the solar system planets but Saturn which was too close to the Sun to be safely visible.
On Thursday we repeated the feat and added Vesta to our tally of observed solar system objects.
Ian Hargraves
Mid-Kent Astronomical Society
www.midkentastro.org.uk
This article has been submitted to the Sky at Night magazine for publication (hopefully).
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 05 August 2009 )
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