Observing planets has always been an interest of mine. I never get tired of looking at moons and cloud features of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the polar ice caps on Mars with my telescope. But locating the planets with the unaided eye can be fun in itself. Yes, they are going to look just like a star, making them challenging to find, but one can observe how they move among the background of stars and when the moon is in town, you have a nice picture perfect moment. And we have just that coming up this week. If you missed the closest approach of Venus and Mercury last week, no worries as the two planets are still visible right after sunset. You’ll need a good view of the west, so look very low to the west-southwest. You should be able to see both by 5:45 pm, but Venus will be the easiest to locate as it is brighter than any of the stars allowing it to be visible earlier. Mercury will be a fainter star-like object to the lower right of Venus. The pair will be less than one fist-width above the horizon with arm extended out around 5:45 pm. Act quickly though as by 6:15 pm the two planets will most likely be too low for you to see. If you need assistance finding the two planets, wait until Wednesday at sunset. That’s when the extremely thin crescent moon forms a triangle with Venus to the left and Mercury below the moon. Then on Thursday night the moon will jump on over to join the reddish star-like object Mars. Did you know that even though temperatures on Mercury can reach up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists have found that there is ice on the closest planet to the Sun? This is possible deep inside craters where they are always in shadow (north pole) and therefore don’t receive any sunlight, hence cold enough to have ice.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 11:38:06 +0000
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