Night Sky Astronomy

Posts Tagged ‘space’

Out of the planets that I had seen through my telescope, I hadn’t seen Venus properly until the end of January this year. Venus has been, and still is, very bright in the sky and at the end of January it was perfectly placed to view in my back garden.

Before viewing the planet, I wasn’t sure what I was going to see. I knew the planet was a sphere and had a blue tint to it but didn’t think that I would see it like that, and I knew it didn’t have any rings so I think I was just expecting to see something like a star in the sky.

It took a couple of nights to actually view Venus properly as on the first night I tried, it was slightly misty, so the planet wasn’t well spotted.  The next night, I waited until it got too dark, so too much light was reflecting from it which dazzled through the telescope. I then read up on viewing Venus and found the best time to view it was at dusk when it was still slightly light and the planet wasn’t too bright. So on my third attempt, I had the telescope outside ready for dusk and saw Venus brilliantly through it!

To my surprise, it did actually look blue! It was like viewing a bluish ball just hanging in Space. It obviously didn’t have the grandeur of Jupiter (Moons and storm clouds) or Saturn (rings) but it was great to see a planet that looked different to the others that I had seen.  I was very pleased with what I saw, to say the least!  The image below is the closest one I could find that looked like what I saw (obviously what I saw was the whole planet and not the half that was in the light).  My telescope is not powerful enough to view the planet in the size below, but I could still see it very well!

The Planet Venus

Venus is still going to be very bright in the sky over the next couple of months, so if you can, I would try and get out and view it!  In fact, the planet is meant to be as bright as the Moon and will cast shadows, which I find very interesting indeed.  The best time to test this would be towards the middle of the month (March) when there is no Moon in the Sky, so Venus should be the main light source during clear nights.

Happy Venus spotting!

I hope someone can help me with this?

I was out at Mount Batten in Plymouth on the 8th January 2011 taking a look at the stars and sky when I noticed a light streaking across the sky. It was coming from a South Easterly direction, moving North Easterly, at a very fast rate. I could see it in the sky for a good 30 seconds until it got past the Moon and suddenly disappeared. I’m quite sure that it wasn’t a shooting star or a meteor as this seemed completely different, so i’m hoping someone knows what this may have been?

I did a bit of research afterwards and found that you can see the Mir Space Station in the sky on occasions and when the sun hits it, it looks like a bright light shooting across the sky. I’m not 100% convinced though.

Can anyone shed some light on this please?