The evening skies have some interesting sights right now, so put on the long-johns, grab your binoculars and go out and look up! The first thing you should go to see are the planets Venus, Mercury and Mars. They are grouped tightly in the southwest after sunset, but this view will change rapidly over the next few days. Mercury is headed back toward the horizon and Venus will climb higher in the sky, passing close to Mars in about a month. Venus passed very close to Mercury two days ago, and the gap will be getting larger as Mercury moves towards the Sun, disappearing in about a week. If you go out to the Diamond Basin Road on the Southfork about ½ to 1 hour after sunset (5:30PM would be best), you should be able to spot the planets fairly easily. Alternately, you could drive out to the hill above Red Lake which will give you a good view to the southwest. Venus will be the very bright star close to the horizon with Mercury just to right of it and little lower. By this time next week Mercury will be gone. Mars is higher and to the left of Venus. The second thing to look for is this year’s Comet Lovejoy. Lovejoy is an amateur Australian astronomer who has discovered several comets, the last being about 1-1/2 years ago. This one is very easy to see with a pair of binoculars, and after you’ve spotted it you should be able to see it with the naked eye. It’s over in the east-south-east on the west side of Orion The Hunter. Below are two links. One takes you to today’s Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD) which was taken over in Jackson Hole Monday night! The other takes you to a page on the EarthSky website that explains about Comet Lovejoy and has a bunch of recent photos of it. It has a chart showing how this evening’s planet show will appear, and another to show you the path of the comet for the rest of the month. I’ve also inserted a sky chart that shows everything as of 5:30PM this evening. You can print the chart to get a hard copy to take with you. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150114.html earthsky.org/space/watch-for-comet-lovejoy
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 20:38:37 +0000
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