From the sky archive · Planets
Finding the planets from New Zealand
This page has been part of the site since 2006 and has been rewritten as a general, evergreen guide to finding the planets from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Planets are the easiest objects in the night sky to see and, oddly, some of the hardest for beginners to identify. They move against the stars, so a printed chart is out of date within weeks. Once you know where they live, though, they become old friends.
Follow the ecliptic
All the planets stay close to the ecliptic, the path the Sun traces through the zodiac constellations over a year. From New Zealand, you face north to see most of it. The ecliptic rises in the east, arcs across the northern sky and sets in the west.
How high it climbs depends on the season and the time of night. On a winter evening the Sun has set low in the northwest, and the opposite part of the ecliptic, through Scorpius and Sagittarius, rides very high, close to overhead by the middle of the night. Any planet near opposition in our winter is beautifully placed. In summer the night-time ecliptic sits lower in the north, through Taurus and Gemini.
A bright "star" that does not twinkle much and sits on that line is very probably a planet.
Why northern charts look upside down
Most popular astronomy books and websites are written for observers in Europe or North America, who face south to see the planets. From New Zealand we face north, so their diagrams appear rotated. The Moon's crescent faces the other way, Orion stands on his head, and planets track from right to left across the sky rather than left to right. If a chart seems wrong, try turning it upside down. Better still, use software set to your own location.
Venus and Mercury in twilight
The inner planets never stray far from the Sun. Venus can reach about 46 degrees from it and is unmistakable, the brightest point of light in the sky after the Moon, low in the west after sunset or low in the east before dawn. Mercury never gets further than about 28 degrees from the Sun and is usually seen for only a week or two at a time, low in bright twilight.
From southern latitudes the best evening views of Mercury tend to come around September and October, when the ecliptic stands steeply above the western horizon after sunset. Morning apparitions are best around March and April. A clear, flat horizon helps enormously.
What a small telescope shows
- Jupiter: the four large Galilean moons are visible in steadily held binoculars, changing position night by night. A small telescope adds the two main cloud belts and, with patience, the Great Red Spot.
- Saturn: the rings show in almost any telescope at 30 times magnification or more. They were edge-on to us in 2025 and are slowly opening out again, so the view improves over the next few years. Titan is easy as a faint star nearby.
- Mars: small and disappointing most of the time, but around opposition, which comes roughly every 26 months, it shows polar caps and dark markings. Oppositions vary a lot in quality depending on how close Mars comes.
- Venus: shows phases, from a small full disc to a large thin crescent.
- Uranus and Neptune: findable with binoculars and a good chart, as a faint blue-green star and a fainter blue point respectively.
Tools for planet hunting
Free planetarium software such as Stellarium shows exactly where each planet is tonight from your own backyard, with the correct southern orientation. The In-The-Sky.org site lists upcoming conjunctions, oppositions and elongations for any location. For background on each world, NASA's planets pages are excellent.
When a planet passes behind the Moon, you can watch it vanish in seconds; our page on lunar occultations explains how and why to time these events.