Show of large planets in the sky, amateur astronomers take pictures

Those who watch these nights under cloudless skies can see something special. All the planets of our solar system are visible, or at least: they all pass once in the night. They were closest to each other around 10 p.m. last night, but they are still in sight for the next few days.

The planets are not all visible to the naked eye. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn yes, but Uranus and Neptune are so far away that you usually need at least binoculars to see them. And Mercury is delicate too; it can only be found after sunset above the southwestern horizon.

The big planetary spectacle isn’t super special, by the way. It happens on average every one to two years that the whole family shows up in one night. In June, five planets were still visible at the same time.

“There are always planets to see,” says astronomer and science journalist Carl Koppeschaar. “Sometimes you have nice conjunctions with the moon, or between two or three planets. I can warm up to that. But such ‘everything is now visible!’ Doesn’t sound like serious astronomy to me. It would actually be really special if there were no planets to see.

“But still,” he adds, “if people can be warmed by that fact to look up, that’s a nice bonus.”

And this is happening more and more. Because it is no longer necessary to build a complete observatory in the attic to take beautiful pictures of a planet, for example. Telescopes still aren’t cheap, but they’re smaller and better than a few years ago, says Esther Hanko, an amateur astronomer involved with the Anton Pannekoek Institute of Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam. “For a few hundred euros you already have a good pair of binoculars.”

Some enthusiasts also share their best photos of the whole year at this time, because some planets were much better visible a few months ago:

To also take a picture of what you see through binoculars, you need a little more. A special astrocamera, for example (and they have become more affordable in recent years), and also software to select the sharpest images. And there is also the navigation with which the telescope itself searches for a certain celestial body. But none of that is necessary to just look at the planets, says Hanko, who has one Blog written about. “Even with normal binoculars you can see some of the moons around Jupiter, and in August you also saw the rings around Saturn.”

Self has already made beautiful images of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in recent months. There are amateur astronomers who go on entire marathons to find as many special objects as possible with their binoculars in one night, but that doesn’t happen for something like the coincidence that the whole family of planets is visible. “It’s mostly for people who want to learn about stargazing,” says Hanko. “But it’s also fun for advanced users to capture it all in one evening and then share the photos.”