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From tomorrow night lasting for about one week, the five naked eye planets will be visable: mercury, venus, mars, jupiter, saturn, ? (I forgot the other one). No telescope needed!

The next time this opportunity will happen is in the year 2036.

All you will need is a big sky and a slight knowledge of the stars, of which I have neither. Fortunately I have a good friend with both and he's hosting a viewing tomorrow night.

I'll let y'all know how it went . . .

RhumChum wrote:the five naked eye planets will be visable: (1)mercury,(2)venus,(3)mars,(4)jupiter,(5)saturn, ? (I forgot the other one).

Um.....

*counts fingers... 1,2,3,4,5...*

Uranus??? (OH COME ON!! Like you thought you were gonna get away with a post about the planets without me making a wise crack about Uranus!)

Thanks for the reminder though! I had forgotten about that! Now I need to get the hell out of Manhattan and take me a look see!

Cool! Didn't know that. We did look at Jupiter through telescope last night just to see what it was -- shining so brightly. We saw the black dot, perpetual storm, so knew it was Jupiter.

Great minds think alike, Linda.

http://www.buffettnews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21954

nycparrothead wrote:

RhumChum wrote:the five naked eye planets will be visable: (1)mercury,(2)venus,(3)mars,(4)jupiter,(5)saturn, ? (I forgot the other one).

Um.....

*counts fingers... 1,2,3,4,5...*

Uranus??? (OH COME ON!! Like you thought you were gonna get away with a post about the planets without me making a wise crack about Uranus!)

Thanks for the reminder though! I had forgotten about that! Now I need to get the hell out of Manhattan and take me a look see!

Thank you Monkey Boy . . . now go and stick a banana in it!

Great night for star viewing!!!!!

Beginning in the west with the first panet on the horizon, Mercury put on a valiant show. Usually this is a difficult planet to see but tonight we saw it in the late sunset just above the horizon. Seeing Mercury was particularly special for me as I am supposedly ruled by this planet.

Let your eye rise in the sky and you will see Venus shining brightly. Right now this planet is in a brightening trend and will perhaps be visable during the day, and I think who cares. . .the stars are so great at night.

Mars was next, recognizable by its distinctive red color. Interestingly, it was just this past August when Mars was heavy in the upper western sky being the closest to earth. Tonight it was high in the eastern sky.

Saturn was located almost directly over head slightly toward the east. Remember a year ago this past December when the rings were open? It will happen again later this summer - the rings won't be open again for another 33 (I think) years. A highlight of seeing Saturn tonight was that it was adjacent to Gemini - this was the first time I ever saw my sign.

Jupiter was in the eastern sky and introduced us to the sign of Leo.

The five naked eye planets were out at first. As the sky darkened, the constellations emerged one by one as if introducing themselves to us. In addition to the ones mentioned, I saw almost all of Orion . . . the hunter, the rabbit Lepus, the dogs Canus Major and Canus Minor.

Our viewing began at about 7 p.m. Central Time and ended at 7:30 p.m. and the sky was so full of stars it would have been difficult to see everything we saw. Mercury had already left.

On the way home "Jolly Man" came on. I had listened to this song lots of times before but heard it tonight for the first time.

If you can, I encourage you to find some big sky and see if you can find the five naked eye planets. This astronomical phenomenon will be occuring through the first week of April and won't be seen again for 32 years.