Talk:Planetary phase

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Note that farther out than Saturn, planets can never be seen by the naked eye no matter their location. Brimo95 (talk) 18:26, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's not quite true. When near opposition, Uranus is just bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, under good conditions. Several time in antiquity, Chinese observers spotted it and marked it on their star charts, but they never noticed that it was moving, and therefore a planet. Their charts gave fairly modern astronomers some old sightings from which they were able to calculate Uranus' orbit with great accuracy. DOwenWilliams (talk) 23:04, 9 February 2015 (UTC)