Planetary Alignments

I’m loving the display the planets are giving us at the moment. On Friday night, I looked up into the vast expanse of the Outer Universe, and saw Mars. Well, to be honest, my brother pointed it out to me in the back garden at my parent’s house, but Mars it was. It was confirmed by my nifty Google Skymap.

We both glanced to the right slightly, and saw Venus and Jupiter doing their little celestial dance in the early evening, and quickly darkening, sky.

One planet that was also around, but we couldn’t get to see it, was Saturn. Saturn was too low in the sky, but was the first planet highlighted by the Skymap when I looked to confirm Mars. I somehow had the feeling that I had to point the mobile phone in a slightly different direction to where I was looking to get the information I wanted. Mars was actually hidden by three green blobs on the map, but when I zoomed in, my phone, and I, became aligned with the planets.

In that moment, four planets were in view. Five if we count Saturn, but four is still a good number.

I’d never dreamed of actually seeing two planets together in the sky, let alone more than two.

Hang on! I hear you say. Five planets? Four planets. Mars. Venus. Jupiter. Saturn… four. Ah! I reply. What are we standing on? Earth is a planet too! Five planets in my immediate vicinity, and I saw the majority of them. Very pleased being a witness to this, I must say.

So pleased in fact, I dashed over to Venus to take some shots with my mobile phone. Unfortunately, when I got there, the phone’s battery power was depleted. I had a little wander around for a couple of hours, and then dashed back to create some images of what I’d seen. Although I was looking from the night-side of the Earth, I was actually seeing the day-side of Venus, so this was where I visited…

I’m not entirely certain, but I may have included Earth in that last picture… and I hope I didn’t leave any footprints when I was there…