Uranus path computed

For a while now I wanted to know the path of Uranus and Neptune so I could work on seeing them. And, ideally, with some frequent consecutive viewings, I could then confirm the sightings. With Pluto demoted, I only have 1 more "planet" to view, and 1 to confirm.

Anyway, I fiddled with my old RedShift software but I couldn't seem to spot this feature (thought I had done it before...). Occasionally, I've seen these images on Sky & Telescope's web site. But a recent search went cold.

I asked on the RASC forums but no one had any suggestions.

This afternoon, I started fiddling with Cartes du Ciel and found that I could track a planet. And I could save the animation in an AVI or a GIF file. Hmmm, promising. Then I specifically disabled the tracking on the planet but remained centred on the region of the sky that planet would move through. Created a sequence for the balance of the year, stepping one week, accumulating 41 frames. Perfect!

I opened the animated GIF file in Fireworks. Trimmed out some unneeded frames. Drew a path with the Bezier curve-based Pen tool. Then entered marker dates with some call-out lines. Titled it, added the constellation name, and added some notes. Done!

Here's the static (non-aminated) image of the file.



N.B. This image is laterally-inverted or mirror-reversed. It is directly usable in a telescope with a mirror diagonal.

Now, I gotta do the one for Neptune!