Speechless

Our two closest neighbors in our solar system are going to be quite visible during the next couple months and should be pretty easy to see, even using just the naked eye (like the ancients used to!).

The planets in our solar system are pretty easy to see at times, yet often go unnoticed. To find a planet in the sky, the first thing you need to know is what a planet looks like. The book A Field Guide to Stars and Planets by Donald Menzell and Jay Pasachoff says that there are three things to take into consideration when trying to find planets: brightness, twinkling, and location. One of the first things that you will notice when you start looking at the sky is that the stars and other objects are different brightnesses. You can take advantage of this fact to figure out what you’re looking at. The brightest things in the sky, other than the moon, are usually the planets. Unlike stars, planets don’t usually appear to twinkle but instead seem to shine steadily. Twinkling is caused by the light being bent as it comes through the atmosphere. A star appears to be just a single point of light since it is so far away so it blinks. However, a planet is closer and bigger and thus its light rays all average out with their blinking, and so it appears to be shining steadily. So all that this means is that if something twinkles it’s most likely not a planet. There’s an imaginary line across the sky called an ecliptic which most of the planets, and also the moon and the sun during the day, stay near as they journey across the sky. The zodiac also can be found along this line. From where we are, the ecliptic crosses the southern part of the sky, which means that any bright objects at the zenith—the point directly over your head—or in the northern sky can’t be planets.

So, to find and recognize a planet you just have to look for a dot of light in the sky that’s really bright, doesn’t seem to twinkle, and isn’t towards the north. If it meets all of those criteria, it’s probably a planet.

One of the easier planets to see is our neighbor Venus. Being the brightest planet because of the sun reflecting off its cloud covering, Venus ususally just appears too bright to be a star. It can never be very far away from the sun in the sky, so whenever an extremely bright dot of light appears in the sky towards the west after sunset, or towards the east before sunrise it’s probably Venus. It’s often the first bright object visible at night, before any of the stars appear in the sky. GoAstronomy.com says that Venus will be at its brightest on December 9, so that would be a particularly good time to take a look at it.

The most impressive planet this month and into early November is going to be our other close neighbor, the planet Mars. According to Martin Ratcliffe and Alister Ling in their article “The Planets” in the October 2005 issue of Astronomy Magazine, Mars is going to be closer in the next couple weeks than any time since the summer of 2003. Even though it was closer in 2003, it will be higher in the sky this time and therefore easier to see. This is going to be its best appearance until 2018, so if you don’t want to have to wait another 13 years, now’s the time to see it. Even though it is quite easy to see at night right now, Mars is going to at its brightest between Halloween night and November 7, so the first week of November will be the best time to see it. It will be highest in the sky during the couple hours after midnight, but it rises mid-evening just after 8:30, so you don’t have to stay up late or get up that early to see it. To see it all you have to do is look to the east and it is just about the brightest thing up there. You can also tell that it is Mars because it has a slight, but noticeable red tinge to it.

I hope you get a chance to take a few minutes to see some of the wonders in the night sky. I’ll end with this fact: according to Dr. Tony Phillips at Science@NASA’s website, Earth is racing toward Mars at a speed of 23,500 mph, which means that the red planet is getting bigger and brighter by the minute. That also means that by the time you’re done reading this post Mars will be more than 1,000 miles closer and that much better to see. All it takes is just a couple moments to look towards the east to catch a glimpse of its beauty and leave you speechless.