Who else is looking for planets?

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This month, all seven of the planets in our solar system (not counting Pluto as a planet) will be visible all at once in the night sky, arranged in an extraordinary pattern called a “great planetary alignment". This is when their positions in their orbits happen to align with ours in relation to the sun. We don’t count Earth as one of the planets to look for in the night sky, for obvious reasons – we’re standing on it Often we hear about celestial phenomena such as this, or meteor showers, lunar eclipses or whatever – but more often than not the sky is cloudy so we can’t see anything anyway. Last night, as it happens, it was clear and dry. After a short and unfruitful search for amphibians (it is toad patrol season again – but they like warm and wet) we decided to have a change from searching the ground and look upwards instead. Mars, Venus and Jupiter were clearly visible, as well as many stars. Saturn was too close to the horizon to be seen and Uranus, Neptune and Mercury couldn’t be seen without a telescope. I do have a basic telescope but so far I haven’t achieved much success with it, so I still couldn’t see anything more than a spot and by the time I found that my hands were too cold to hang about much longer anyway! But if we have more chances in the next few days I will have another try. Has anyone else been looking out for them? All rights reserved. © Text copyright Fleur 2025. Image from Pixabay.