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No a telescope won't help. The 'linear' alignment spans the whole sky and is best seen with the naked eye. You can click a pic with a wide-angle lens (whether

No a telescope won't help. The 'linear' alignment spans the whole sky and is best seen with the naked eye. You can click a pic with a wide-angle lens (whether on your phone or a camera).

jfim 2y ago
Will a picture from a wide angle lens actually show the planets? I thought planets just show up as a bright dot in the sky.
- kadoban 2y ago
  > Will a picture from a wide angle lens actually show the planets? Yes. > I thought planets just show up as a bright dot in the sky. Correct. :) There's no real way to get around that geometry problem, you can either see several at once but they're pinpricks or one at a time but potentially somewhat more clearly.
  - 1000100_1000101 2y ago
    To add to this, I'll try to give an idea of how much zoom (or focal length really) you'd need to get a picture with detail. I took photos of both Jupiter and Saturn w/ a Canon R7 and the RF 100-500mm lens, with a 1.4x extender. The 1.4x extender make the lens act like 700mm instead of 500mm. The R7 being an APS-C sensor adds another 1.6x factor, making the combo the equivalent of 1120mm. In these photos the planets are still just dots. The camera takes 32.5 megapixel photos. When zoomed in to the pixel level, both planets were still tiny, about 50 pixels wide. It was enough to see Saturn had a ring and some color striping on Jupiter, but that's it. The iPhone main camera is like 26mm (42x less zoom). The iPhone 13 Pro's telephoto lens is 77mm (14.5x less zoom), and the iPhone 15 Pro Max is 120mm (9.3x less zoom)... so you're unlikely to get much more than what looks like an out of focus few pixel wide dot even on the zoomiest of iPhones, but with that wider 26mm lens, you just might be able to capture them all in one shot. To me, what's more technically impressive than the fact I took pictures of the planets with readily available camera gear was that I did with 1/125s shutter speed, handheld, standing in my yard. The accuracy of the image stabilization needed to pull that off is what astounded me the most.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Yes, but they will show exactly as you thought with the exception Mars will be a noticeable red dot. Uranus is usually too dim to see though. Usually to photograph Uranus and Pluto requires multiple nights worth of images to align and see which dot moves between the images. That moving dot is the planet

No a telescope won't help. The 'linear' alignment spans the whole sky and is best seen with the naked eye. You can click a pic with a wide-angle lens (whether on your phone or a camera).

jfim 2y ago

Will a picture from a wide angle lens actually show the planets? I thought planets just show up as a bright dot in the sky.

kadoban 2y ago
> Will a picture from a wide angle lens actually show the planets? Yes. > I thought planets just show up as a bright dot in the sky. Correct. :) There's no real way to get around that geometry problem, you can either see several at once but they're pinpricks or one at a time but potentially somewhat more clearly.
- 1000100_1000101 2y ago
  To add to this, I'll try to give an idea of how much zoom (or focal length really) you'd need to get a picture with detail. I took photos of both Jupiter and Saturn w/ a Canon R7 and the RF 100-500mm lens, with a 1.4x extender. The 1.4x extender make the lens act like 700mm instead of 500mm. The R7 being an APS-C sensor adds another 1.6x factor, making the combo the equivalent of 1120mm. In these photos the planets are still just dots. The camera takes 32.5 megapixel photos. When zoomed in to the pixel level, both planets were still tiny, about 50 pixels wide. It was enough to see Saturn had a ring and some color striping on Jupiter, but that's it. The iPhone main camera is like 26mm (42x less zoom). The iPhone 13 Pro's telephoto lens is 77mm (14.5x less zoom), and the iPhone 15 Pro Max is 120mm (9.3x less zoom)... so you're unlikely to get much more than what looks like an out of focus few pixel wide dot even on the zoomiest of iPhones, but with that wider 26mm lens, you just might be able to capture them all in one shot. To me, what's more technically impressive than the fact I took pictures of the planets with readily available camera gear was that I did with 1/125s shutter speed, handheld, standing in my yard. The accuracy of the image stabilization needed to pull that off is what astounded me the most.
dylan604 2y ago
Yes, but they will show exactly as you thought with the exception Mars will be a noticeable red dot. Uranus is usually too dim to see though. Usually to photograph Uranus and Pluto requires multiple nights worth of images to align and see which dot moves between the images. That moving dot is the planet