A plethora of planets in February 2025!

[Ross Wilkinson]

Following our recent meeting, on Wednesday (5th) we had a clear night, so I got out my little 70mm ED refractor and fitted it onto an ancient Tasco GoTo mount.

Just before 6pm, looking West from outside the kitchen door I could see the crescent Venus and taking an alignment from this, managed to find Saturn low down in the twilight. As the rings are nearly edge-on to us at the moment, they were very difficult to see: I ended up using my 10mm eyepiece with a Barlow-lens (80x magnification).

Then around 7:30pm I went out down the garden to have a look at Jupiter and Mars (on the latter I could just percieve a darker area on the disk at x80). Then I used the GoTo mount to find Uranus, just showing a disk.

I think this may be the first time I've seen five planets in one evening, but maybe towards the end of this month we could have Mercury too (very close to Saturn around the 25th)?

[Ross Wilkinson]

I did manage to spot Mercury, but not until 5th March.

Once again, from outside the kitchen door at 6:30, using Venus as a guide, and panning downwards with my old 7x50 binoculars I soon found it - not far above the house roofs. Then, knowing where it was, I could just make it out with the unaided eye too.