Looking Up: Planets keep amazing us if we just look at them
The planets constantly amaze us, and we shouldn’t need the close-up inspection by robotic space probes to capture our attention. The space pictures can add to our fascination, however, as we go out at night and see the planets, connecting in our mind this age of discovery by spacecraft.
Just look west the next clear evening in June. The two bright planets, Jupiter and Venus, are getting closer and closer. Don’t expect a collision. These worlds are never closer than around 420 million miles apart, but from our perspective they are about to make an amazing alignment.
Venus is the brighter of the two, at lower right. Each night watch as Jupiter edges closer. They will have an impressively close conjunction around the last weekend in June when they will be just under a half degree apart. That’s about the apparent width of the Full Moon as from Earth.
Stunning with the unaided eye, the view will also dazzle in binoculars and even a small telescope at low magnification should put both planets in the same field of view. On June 13th the planets will be 11 degrees apart.
To the right of Venus is the pair of bright star, Pollux (on the left) and Castor, the “heads” of the constellation Gemini the Twins. Around June 13, look at Venus with binoculars once the sky is dark. You should also see the Beehive Star Cluster close by.
In the evening this month, look to the southeast for another bright planet, Saturn. This year the famed ringed planet appears just to the right of the relatively bright stars of the “head” of the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. Saturn appears as a bright yellow-white “star.” You need at least a small telescope with about 40X magnification to begin to see the ring system. Higher magnification, say between 60X and 100X, will give a wonderful view.
Once you see Saturn in a telescope for the first time, it is a sight you may never forget. The ring system, although composed of thousands of concentric rings, will appear as one sold ring in a small telescope. The rings appear foreshortened as an ellipse, from our point of view, with the ball of the planet tucked in the middle. The rings appear so sharp and unlike anything else you will see in the sky.
Look in your small telescope for what appears to be a dim star right next to Saturn. This is likely Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Like with Jupiter’s four largest moons, you can watch Titan slowly orbit around the planet if you look night to night.
About to make big news is the faintest of the well-known planets, what has been reclassified as a “dwarf planet,” Pluto. On July 14th NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will pass close by Pluto and its moons, mankind’s first-ever encounter to observe this far away world. Astronomers and interested public alike are eager to see what new horizons will discover.
The best we have seen so far of Pluto is a smudgy blur, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Amateur astronomers with moderate to large telescopes have succeeded in finding Pluto, as an incredibly faint speck among a myriad of faint stars in the background. I was blessed to have seen Pluto more than once a few years ago, using a 10-inch reflecting telescope on very dark nights. Alas, Pluto is moving further away and now needs a telescope of greater size. Much patience and careful scrutiny are required to pick out Pluto using a detailed star chart.
The wonder of the heavens never ends. Take a look tonight!
New moon is on June 16.
Keep looking up!
Peter W. Becker is managing editor of The News Eagle in Hawley, Pennsylvania He welcomes your notes at news@neagle.com. Please say where you read this column.