Achievement unlocked! Five in a row!

Did it! Got out of bed at 5am and Weis and I viewed the cosmic wagon train of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury and the Moon stretched across the sky.

As predicted by Stellarium

We even got a bonus ISS sighting at 0530 as well - well, Weis did, I was distracted fiddling with the camera and didn't realize what she had spotted.

When we first got out Jupiter was clear to the left of the pine tree, and then heading Eastwards there was Spica, then Mars, then the bushes and fortunately Saturn was on the other side of those.

Jupiter

Spica and Mars

Acturis and Saturn

 
We checked out Jupiter, Mars and Saturn with Dobby - I'm really enjoying the range of EPs I now have (even if they are simple Skywatchers) Used the 17mm, the 8mm and then the 8mm plus the Barlow on Saturn. Magnificent views as the sky continued to offer great seeing and transparency!  I would estimate the seeing as an 8/10 and the transparency could have been 10/10.

Jupiter was beautiful.  The bands clearly visible and the four moons clear with three on the right of the planet and one to the left.  No details were clear on Mars, but it was bright and very salmon coloured.  Tried a few of the filters, but they didn't help to reveal any extra details this time.  Saturn at high magnification with the Barlow and the 8mm was absolutely gorgous. 

I took a few photos using 6 second exposures, the best of which are below.  Some trailing is evident.  I set the ISO to 100, use manual focusing and let the camera determine its own apeture.

By now Venus and Mercury were rising, but Dobby couldn't get the right angle on those.So I took the finder scope off Dobby and used that hand-held to check out Venus.  Always like seeing the phases of Venus - this time it was gibeous.

Then a thin crescent moon rose and I snapped a bunch of photos as dawn broke, and it was clearly time to wrap up the observations and head back to bed to grab a few more hours of sleep.

Scorpio and Saturn

A great shot of Scorpio

Venus and Mercury over the house

Shot of the evening: Venus, Mercury and the crescent Moon