Paul Davis sent me this photograph
which embraces all seven planets in the ancient sense: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and, represented by its glow, the Sun.
Enlarge the photo if you can; see our end note about ways to do so. It was taken on the evening of 2002 May 14, at Mithymna (Mêthymna, Molybos) on the Greek island Lesbos. It’s remarkable to get those seven in one picture. They are not, however, in their outward order: Mars and, especially, Saturn have stepped put of place. Thus this is not quite what I’ve called a “parade.”
Paul has indicated the bodies’ tiny images by means of their traditional symbols, around the picture’s margins. Here is my diagram of the scene.
Paul remarks that the planets “fit into one 35mm frame.” (The span from Mercury to Saturn was 33 degrees.) “I was especially pleased to have captured that on film with my old Zenit,” and I think he will add further comments.
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Plus they didn’t know about Uranus and Neptune but they must have seen Uranus but as it’s so dim to the naked eye you probably won’t notice it’s movements as it’s so far out it doesn’t move from Earth’s perspective much year by year anyhow!
Of course in the Classical world the Earth was terra firma, and, not being a celestial object that moves against the starry field (asters planetai ) – not a planet. :-)
Thank you for posting this – it’s hard to believe that 20 years have passed since that shot. What was remarkable to me was that ALL SEVEN classical planets fit into one “normal” lens angle of view. Since I use a crop sensor these days – my normal lens is now 35 mm – but, digging out the old Zenit with the cloth shutter I find that I had a 50 mm – which is the full-frame “normal” – and which covers an angle of 48 degrees diagonally. The “classical” planets are those after which (whom?) the days of the week are named; are the naked-eye visible celestial bodies that move against the starry background. The classical ordering of the planets was by the speed of the object’s movement: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. I have heard it said that, naming each hour of the day in this order, and naming the days as a whole by the first name of the day, one gets Moonday, Marsday, Mercuryday, Jupiterday, Venusday, Saturnday and Sunday. (Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi, Samedi, Dimanche – if I remember my French).
The shutter speed was manual and probably just under 2 seconds. The camera was held against a utility pole and the print carefully made to reproduce the actual to-the-eye appearance of the scene. This is a scan of a large print and is not retouched or enhanced, excepting a little (darkening) repair to some white spots from moisture damage to the print.
I was working at a planetarium in the 1980s during the much-anticipated “Jupiter Effect” craze; a tight grouping of planets – but on either side of the Sun. This ganging up of all the planets on one side of the Earth was supposed to pull the ice sheet of Antarctica or some-such calamity. I then looked, with a ForTran program, for some future grouping with the Sun on one side – such that all would be visible within the range of a natural fixed gaze – and found the 2002 date. I have NOT found another occasion with all classical planets visible a once to the unmoving eye (excepting the Sun of course – though it does fit within the frame – below the horizon).
I have yet to see any commentary on photos of this “parade of planets” that makes mention that … Earth is also in all the photos
Right. And Earth is always out of order, being before Mercury. So if Earth were included there would never be a parade, and we have to define parades as including only the planets that are in Earth’s sky.
Not so the Moon, whose correct parade position would be between Venus and Mars. And the Sun would be first member in a parade if just above the horizon, except that then we would have to modify the definition to allow the planets to be in the sky but not visible.
It looks like the different colours of the atmosphere too.The orangish hue of the troposphere, the white of the stratosphere,blue of the mesosphere and black of the thermosphere and exosphere.
I was working at the Aldrin Planetarium in West Palm Beach when this occurred. We tried to make a deal about it, but it we already had an event planned for the June annular eclipse, which occurred at sunset for us.