I watched The Sky At Night on BBC4 last week. It's almost the longest running programme on TV and is, shall we say, a bit dry. However, they explained where to look for 4 planets that are visible before 10pm at the moment. I went looking. At 9pm, look in the direction of the sunset. There is a really bright star. That's actually the panet Venus. Down and right of it, maybe about the width of your hand held at arm's length, there is a much fainter dot. That is the planet Mercury. I'd never seen Mercury before. Last night I picked it out from the car park in the middle of Wigton. Mercury is closest to the Sun so it is only visible in the half light at sunset (and just before sunrise at other times). This makes it hard to see because it is not very bright. It is also close to the horizon as well and it has gone before it is properly dark. All this makes it hard to see. So I photographed Venus. It is clearly a disk and not a point. That makes it a planet. My next ambition is to see Venus go through phases like the Moon (Eg full disk, half disk, quarter disk etc) Galileo observed this. My telesope is really for wildlife not stars, but last night I picked out the rings of Saturn with the 40x lens. Life doesn't get much better than that! By the way, Saturn is roughly South West at 10pm and about 30 degrees up. Mars is almost above your head and clearly redder. You have a day to watch the second of the two programmes which tells you where to see the planets if you whizz through to nearer the end. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mk7h
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Planets in the night sky
I watched The Sky At Night on BBC4 last week. It's almost the longest running programme on TV and is, shall we say, a bit dry. However, they explained where to look for 4 planets that are visible before 10pm at the moment. I went looking. At 9pm, look in the direction of the sunset. There is a really bright star. That's actually the panet Venus. Down and right of it, maybe about the width of your hand held at arm's length, there is a much fainter dot. That is the planet Mercury. I'd never seen Mercury before. Last night I picked it out from the car park in the middle of Wigton. Mercury is closest to the Sun so it is only visible in the half light at sunset (and just before sunrise at other times). This makes it hard to see because it is not very bright. It is also close to the horizon as well and it has gone before it is properly dark. All this makes it hard to see. So I photographed Venus. It is clearly a disk and not a point. That makes it a planet. My next ambition is to see Venus go through phases like the Moon (Eg full disk, half disk, quarter disk etc) Galileo observed this. My telesope is really for wildlife not stars, but last night I picked out the rings of Saturn with the 40x lens. Life doesn't get much better than that! By the way, Saturn is roughly South West at 10pm and about 30 degrees up. Mars is almost above your head and clearly redder. You have a day to watch the second of the two programmes which tells you where to see the planets if you whizz through to nearer the end. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mk7h
