Have you ever wondered how to find planets in the sky? among the stars? Today you have a great opportunity to easily locate both. You don’t need a telescope, binoculars, or a sky map for that. Human eyes are enough.
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With the advancement of technological civilization, the night sky, a sight so familiar to every inhabitant of the Earth before the industrial revolution, becomes less and less accessible. Artificial lighting of roads, buildings, industrial plants, tall buildings, pollution – all these factors effectively limit our opportunities to look straight into the dark night sky. What’s more, when we even look at the sky, we will not see much, the glow of a big city means that in the sky, instead of thousands, we can only see a few of the brightest stars.
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As a result, the common knowledge that planets are also visible among the stars in the night sky is becoming less and less popular. As a result of this, however, it is sometimes worth taking a look at the night sky.
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If you go outside on Saturday night, when the clouds are about to let go and reveal a portion of the sky that is visible to the south, you will see more than just the Moon.
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The configuration of the Solar System’s objects causes it to appear in one part of the sky in today’s night sky moon, Jupiter and Saturn. At midnight (Polish time), the Moon will only be 14 hours before full moon, so its disc will shine brightly in the sky today.
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Look towards the gas giants
Near midnight, the Moon will be 375,000 km from Earth. When you look towards it, you will see a bright point just to the left and slightly upstream of the moon – that’s what it will be Jupiter. It will be 5 degrees left and 5 degrees up from the moon in the sky. Usually, however, determining angular distances in the sky is not very intuitive.
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Did you find him? Fantastic. Jupiter is just over 600 million km from Earth today. Yes, we see it with the naked eye as a single point of light. We won’t see any details, we won’t even see it as a shield.
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But when you look at him, remember everything you know about him. Looking at this inconspicuous dot, you are looking directly at the largest planet in the solar system, a gas giant that could fit 1,100 such planets as Earth.
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More than 70 moons orbit in the immediate vicinity of Jupiter. Among them, such raisins as Ganymede – the largest moon of the solar system, Europa – an icy moon that conceals an ocean of liquid water under its ice crust containing twice as much water as all oceans on Earth, or finally the – the moon is covered with extremely active volcanoes, from which plumes of lava and dust constantly fly out, which, after falling, constantly change the landscape on the surface of the globe. Looking towards him, you can de facto look towards a globe within which there is some form of life. For several years now, the Juno probe has been orbiting around Jupiter, which every few weeks approaches the majestic clouds of the planet and performs fascinating photos like the ones below. When you look at this bright dot with your naked eye, you are looking directly at it all.
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We look back to the moon.
Now we look to the right of the moon. 12 degrees further (just over twice as far as Jupiter) we find Saturnwhich will no longer be as bright as Jupiter and will require a good look at the sky. Its low brightness, however, is not surprising. It is enough to realize that Saturn is slightly smaller than Jupiter and, above all, much further away. While Jupiter is 600 million km away from Earth today, Saturn is 1 billion 350 million km from us, which is more than twice as far.
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Did you find Saturn? Great. We are looking in the head for information about this fascinating planet: the second largest planet in the solar system, surrounded by a spectacular system of rings, consisting of smaller and larger boulders. As in the case of Jupiter, several dozen moons should be mentioned here, among which we can find such jewels as Titanium – the only moon in the solar system covered with a dense atmosphere. Moreover, it’s the only place outside Earth that has lakes (yes, filled with liquid hydrocarbons, not water, but irrelevant). It can therefore be said that Titan is the only known place with beaches so far. In 2005, the Huygens lander landed on the surface of Titan.
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In addition to Titan, near Saturn we also find a second potential habitat for life in the solar system. Small Enceladus – like Europa – is an ice moon inside which there is an ocean of liquid water. Interestingly, the water from the inside of the moon rises to the surface near its south pole. Through the so-called Tiger Belt, geysers of water from the inside of the moon gush constantly through a system of rifts in the surface. A few years ago, a probe passed through one of these geysers Cassini (only 30 kilometers above the surface of Enceladus), thereby making the first encounter with extraterrestrial water. Unfortunately, there are currently no space probes circling around Saturn and, what’s worse, none are even planned.
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Curiosity
It has never been necessary for man in the course of his evolution to determine angular sizes and angular distances in the sky. For this reason, it is terribly counterintuitive. You see the full moon in the sky today. Look at the horizon, the point of contact between heaven and earth. Take your gaze from the horizon to the zenith – a point directly vertically above you. How many such Full Moons do you think you could stack on top of each other to reach the zenith from the horizon?
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Maybe before I give the answer, it is an additional task. How many Full Moons today will fit in a straight line between the Moon and nearby Jupiter?
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Already?
It’s 90 degrees from the horizon to the zenith.
It is 7 degrees from the Moon to Jupiter.
The moon’s diameter is … only 0.5 degrees.
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Thus, as many as 180 Moons can be lined up in one line from the horizon to the zenith.
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A straight line from the Moon to Jupiter would fit as many as 14 full Moons at midnight today. Unintuitive? Yes, but true.
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