Night Sky Astronomy

Posts Tagged ‘moon’

At the moment Mars is shining very brightly in the sky, and if you look for it at about 9pm, it will be very close to the moon.  It is so bright that you can’t really miss it and can even be seen clearly when the full moon is shining brightly. Mars is at its closest to the Earth at the moment which is why it is a great time to get out and view the planet through either binoculars or a telescope.

I noticed it a couple of nights ago when I decided to have a look at the sky at about 9pm. Whilst looking around I spotted a very bright and red star just under and to the left of the almost full moon. At first I thought it was Betelgeuse or Aldebaran (both red giants) but as I scanned the night sky further, I picked these up further to the South East from where I was standing. So I consulted my astronomy book and found that it was actually Mars shining bright and red in the sky.  I had never seen it so red before, so I went in and got some binoculars to take a closer look (I didn’t have immediate access to my telescope at the time). I was quite amazed to be able to make out the North Polar Cap of the planet as it was shining brightly, and some of the darker mountain regions. I spent several minutes gazing at Mars and it was great!

A couple of days later, after a lot of rain, I got my telescope out ready to take a look, only for the sky to cloud over on a couple of occasions. When I did finally manage to get a glimpse between clouds, Mars wasn’t as red or as bright unfortunately. Through the telescope I couldn’t see too much at all and nowhere near the detail that I saw through my binoculars, which was a great shame. It was probably due to the Moon being completely full and the brightest I had seen it for a long time, and also because it was literally to the right of Mars. The glare of the Moon was too much to see Mars properly.  Whilst I was out there, I did get a good look at Venus again before it crept over and behind the roof of my house!

Here is an image of Mars that I have found that is closest to what I saw through my binoculars –

The Planet Mars

It has now been a whole year since I received my telescope for my 30th birthday, and I have learnt so much in that time!

It was exactly a year ago that I found out which bright light in the sky was Jupiter so I thought that I would go out and view it again, now that I have had more experience with the telescope.

I wasn’t disappointed either as I managed to home in on the Red Planet pretty quickly and got it into focus using several lenses with minimal trouble. What I saw was again brilliant and I could make out four of Jupiter’s moons beside it.  In fact, whilst I was looking at the planet, one of the moon’s popped out from behind the right hand side of it, which  I thought was great! 😉  I could also make out the swirling colours of Jupiter when I used the highest magnification lens that was available to me.

Overall, I was very pleased with the evening’s Astronomy and it showed that I have definitely learnt loads about the night sky in the past year.

N.B. Jupiter is currently very bright in the Sky and is one of the first objects that you can see during and after dusk. You can’t miss it! 😉

The photograph of Jupiter below was taken by the Voyager 1 Spacecraft when it was still more than 25 million miles away on January 24th 1979.  The object on the bottom left is Ganymede which is Jupiter’s largest Moon.

The Red Planet Jupiter

For the past few weeks Saturn has been in a great position in the sky to view through either binoculars or telescopes.  It is currently in the Eastern Sky within the Constellation of Virgo.

The planet Saturn in the Constellation of Virgo

I had been trying for a long time to get a good view of the planet via my telescope, but had been scuppered a lot of the time due to bad weather and haze in the sky in the evenings.  The sky has also been brighter later in the evenings now, so I have had to go out later and later each night to view it.  When you have an energetic 2 year old, this is a difficult task as by that time of night, you are shattered!!  😉

Eventually, after many attempts, I managed to get a great view of the planet and could very clearly make out the rings around it.  It was an amazing site and I was very pleased that I managed to get my telescope to focus in correctly.

The Planet Saturn

Some of you may be interested to know that the rings of Saturn are so big that they would nearly reach all the way to the Moon from the Earth, and the planet is so dense that it would float on an ocean.  Amazing.   Saturn also has 60 moons with the most famous being Titan, but unfortunately I was unable to spot any of these through the telescope, though I will try again when the weather is better!

If you have any thoughts or statistics about Saturn, please leave them as comments to this post as I would find any other information very interesting indeed! Thanks!

On the morning of the 21st December, the moon moved into the Earth’s shadow and caused a total eclipse.  Luckily enough, it was a clear morning with great visibility and the moon was perfectly positioned between two houses for the beginning of the eclipse at 06:15.  I was looking at it from our bedroom window and could see the shadow gradually moving across from left to right.  It was a great site to behold, but I had a bad cold and wasn’t able to watch the full event, so had to go back to bed.  When I woke up to take a look a little later, the moon had moved behind some houses so I was unable to see it.  It was a shame, but i’m glad that I saw the beginning of the event.

Unfortunately I didn’t see many of the Geminid meteors at all.  I went out on the 12th December for about an hour, intending to solely keep an eye out for them, but got sidetracked by the Moon and Jupiter.  They were both high up in the sky and shining brightly. It was a very clear night.  I had both the telescope and the binoculars out and the moon showed up brilliantly.  Looking at Jupiter, I couldn’t see any of the moons this time which was a shame.  This may be because Jupiter is getting darker and further away now, since its peak in November.  In between looking at these two, I did scan the night for the Geminids and saw two shoot over the sky, coming from a Northerly direction and moving towards the West.

I went out occasionally over the next three nights, but there was a lot more cloud in the sky.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see anymore Geminid meteors, so will have to wait until next year’s show!

Time: 20:00 – 21:00, Longitude: 50.435423, Latitude: -4.093217, Viewing: North and East