VitaCora

4. Planets

4 min read

PLANET OR STAR

There are five visible planets from the earth, they are identical in shape to stars, are colored points that shine more or less brightly, depending on the planet.

Sometines it’s not easy to recognice them, so I will give some easy tips to know if you are seeing a planet or and star:

Twinkle: Any of the planets shine by it self, all of them reflect the sun light, the light that reaches us from them is more distributed in space, since they are extended objects, that gives stability against the turbulence of the atmosphere, o If you see a star that doesn´t twinkle, you can be sure it’s a plannet.

Sunset & Sunrise: If you are outside during the sunset or sunrise, even in the center of a city and you see a single star in the sky, you can be pretty sure it’s a planet

Position: They are always close to the eclectic, are part of the constellations and change position constantly,

5 VISIBLE PLANTES

Venus:

  • The brightest planet in the sky, Venus is so bright that it can sometimes even be seen before the sky becomes completely dark,.
  • As it is a planet in the inner part of the solar system it never appears very far from the Sun, so we can only see it around sunset or sunrise.
  • When it appears before sunrise, it is known as the “Morning Star”; after sunset, the “Evening Star”.

Jupiter:

  • Jupiter is one of the brightest objects in the night sky, beeing the second brightest planet after Venus.
  • The giant that comes with its own miniature solar system, If you bring binoculars, Jupiter at night holds a surprise, or rather four, four tiny points of light close to it: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, the Galilean moons.
  • With a small telescope, Jupiter itself can also reveal its cloud bands.
  • They orbit Jupiter and change position from night to night.

Saturn:

  • The ringed planet. Saturn is easy to recognize as a bright, yellowish point, but its real surprise requires optical aid.
  • A small telescope can reveal its spectacular rings
  • Ordinary binoculars generally aren’t powerful enough to clearly resolve the rings, although they can help you locate Saturn.
  • The rings are made mostly of countless pieces of ice and rock.

Mars:

  • The red one. Mars is recognizable by its distinctive orange-red colour, caused by iron minerals in its surface dust and rocks.
  • Its brightness changes considerably depending on where Earth and Mars are in their orbits, becoming particularly impressive around opposition when Mars is opposite the Sun in our sky and can remain visible throughout the night.

Mercuriy:

  • The difficult one. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, so from Earth it never appears very far from it.
  • This means it can only be seen briefly around sunset or sunrise, very low above the horizon.
  • It is often much harder to spot than Venus because it is both fainter and closer to the Sun in our sky.
  • The best opportunities occur around greatest elongation, when Mercury reaches its maximum apparent distance from the Sun.

Planets that require intruments

Uranus and Neptune are not considered planets visible to the naked eye due to their great distance from Earth, their low brightness, and their slow movement.

For this reason, ancient civilizations only knew of planets as far south as Saturn, and these two worlds required the use of telescopes to be discovered.

Uranus:

  • The almost-visible planet. Uranus is technically bright enough to be seen with the naked eye under exceptionally dark skies, but it is extremely difficult to distinguish from the surrounding stars.
  • Binoculars make it much easier to find, although you will still need a star chart or an app such as Stellarium to identify it.
  • Through a telescope, it appears as a tiny blue-green disk.

Neptuno:

  • The invisible-to-the-naked-eye planet. Neptune is too faint to see without optical aid.
  • It requires a telescope to observe, and even then it appears only as a tiny blue point or disk rather than a detailed world.

Ecliptic:

Planets align: If you identify all the planets of the sky you will realice that they are quite align, you are looking at the Ecliptic, the projection on the sky of the plane in which the bodies of the solar system rotate.

Constellations: And behind de ecliptic, the constellations that pass through it are the famous zodiac constellations.

Orientation: The electic is a constant reference in the sky, that why is perfect to use it for orientation since we will always find there the planets, zodiacal constellations, and the sunset and moonrise will, and we can use all this information to orientate outselves.

Graph View