Finding specs of planet alignments?

Hi

Can anyone tell me how one can go about getting planet alignments to earth or specific country given a certain date/time?

Absolutely. Do a google search for a program called "Stellarium". It can do exactly what you are describing for planets, stars, and major astronomical bodies. I did run into problems when I tried to go far into the past, though, so if your goal is to test the alignments of stars over the pyramids at 10000 B.C, this program won't work, unless you figure out some way that I couldn't.

Stellarium allows configuration where you can enter any latitude/longitude on the planet, and also you can configure the time you want. (future or past, although there are limits how far away you can look) The output of the program is a night sky map where you can see where all the visible objects in the sky are, and you can click on them to get details and exact locations (i.e. azimuthal angle, etc) about where to find them in real life.

There are other programs out there that do the same thing, but since Stellarium did everything I wanted to, except the long-range time thing, I didn't bother trying others. Stellarium is really easy to use; a child could figure it out.

And if you want to find out the planets all in a line in space, say Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc... All in a line your best bet would be to make the calculations yourself. A program can get you "close" at best. Close is in quotes there because on the screen they all may look aligned but in reality they are not.

Thanks for the info I got that prog and the other here is a little problem. Maybe you can help further:

I am getting a different degree listing for the following specs using Stellarium any idea why?

SKYGLOBE lists cairo at 19.5 degrees to Mars on 2011 @ 11:59PM

Stellarium is listing Cario at 6 degrees/35'27'45" on 2011 1159PM
but Stellarium is set at a default of EST I set the clock to 6:59AM to make up for time diff.

Which program is wrong? Or maybe the values I am setting are off?

Originally posted by japike
SKYGLOBE lists cairo at 19.5 degrees to Mars on 2011 @ 11:59PM

Stellarium is listing Cario at 6 degrees/35'27'45" on 2011 1159PM

Make sure they're both using the same coordinate system. One may be showing the coordinates as altitude and azimuth while the other looks to be showing RA/Dec.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Try reading these:

The Horizon System (altitude and azimuth)
The Equatorial Coordinate System (RA/Dec)