Hi Oshyan, thanks again for your prompt reply.
Yes, this is what I'm doing to move the planets about, repositioning them numerically and via the 3d viewport.
The reason I'm asking for alternatives is that I'm making 360 panoramas and I'm finding this method a bit troublesome as in order to re-position the objects I need to keep jumping back and forth from the camera/render view to the 3d preview, repositioning the 3d preview cam each time of course, and then I'm finding that the manipulator handles of the planet objects are not clickable/selectable above certain zoom amounts (maybe the handle selection area scales with the viewport window zoom amount?) so I'm either zooming in/out or relying on numeric input entirely. ...and the numeric input repositioning the planets becomes a three step input process for each repo and then because I'm doing 360 panos checking the position in the render view becomes and constant changing between render camera and back to the 3d preview, etc etc.
But you get what I mean. Thanks again for your reply!