What's Up?

Dawn or dusk, the planets always put on a great show. Like brilliant sequins in the sky, they are visible well before the sun has fully risen or completely set. It doesn’t matter whether you are a morning person or an evening person, you’ll find planets anytime after the sun disappears, even at midnight or the middle of the night. Best viewing is when they are well above the horizon's thick atmospheric interference.

Rather than discover planets scientifically by mass, rotation, or angular velocity, let’s just enjoy them with eyes or a pair of binoculars. Many good websites can give you detailed planetary information and photos. I prefer staring at them with my own eyes. I poked my head out the door this morning as the sun came up. The stars of the night had faded, but two brilliant orange tinted jewels were rising in the eastern sky, Mars and Saturn. On my way home, the setting sun with its attendant bright smears of orange cloud vapors were unable to blot out two of our brightest planets: glaring white Venus and yellow Jupiter.

If you are a morning person, look toward the rising sun just before dawn. Mars will be higher in the sky than Saturn. It glows a bright red; hence, its name the Red Planet. Like the planet Jupiter, it has spawned books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_Chronicles and movies http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199753/ of this near neighbor.

Saturn tends to glow yellow. If you mount binoculars on a stable tripod, you will see a hint of the rings. Think football--the planet does not look round; at least not currently. Seeing the rings depends on the planet’s tilt. When we see Saturn’s rings edge on from our perspective, they disappear and the planet looks round. Presently, their tilt is at 15 degrees and the rings are visible. http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/saturn-orbit.htm

Evening people can’t miss Venus. In fact, everyone knows the Evening Star is Venus. It’s always the brightest “star” above the horizon at sunset. Its brightness is not so much related to size as to its closeness to earth. Venus goes through phases, like the moon, but when it is at its best viewing distance from earth it is actually never full. Yet, binoculars can show the planet’s disk in phase.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_Venus

Jupiter moves slowly across the sky. If you follow it from month to month, you will see it traveling from one constellation of stars to another as it completes its nine year orbit around the sun. Taking the time to follow its path proves that planets, once called wanderers by the ancients, really do move. The biggest delight comes from using binoculars. Even sports binoculars will enable you to see Jupiter’s four Galilean moons. Watching them wander around the planet is not a slow night to night endeavor. It’s an hour to hour delight, because they move relatively quickly around the planet. With the next link you can become a true observational astronomer. It teaches how to record data as you watch Jupiter’s moons. http://kepler.nasa.gov/files/mws/JupitersMoonsHOU.pdf

A favorite children's story about the moons of Jupiter was written in the 1950's. Called Farmer in the Sky, it is still loved worldwide as a science fiction great. If you are tired of standing outside in the dark and staring up at Jupiter or watching it's moons whip around the planet, cozy up in bed with a good book by Robert A Heinlein. http://www.gotterdammerung.org/books/robert-heinlein/farmer-in-the-sky.html