Uranus is visible to the naked eye but very difficult to locate, even with the help of binoculars. If you’re in a city or an area with surrounding light, it’ll be nearly impossible.
Mercury is also difficult to see because of its proximity to the sun. It is usually best seen ~45 minutes before sunrise or after sunset, and it’ll be very low in the sky. Since it’s about 20-25 degrees above the horizon, you,ll need to be away from trees and buildings.
Yeah, our family likes a good joke. We like factual accuracy too. If, sometimes, one must be sacrificed for the other . . . well, that’s unfortunate, but we make the tough decisions.
I think I know what my point was, thank you very much. I was responding to the OP’s question about what planets he could see, and pointing out that northern versus southern hemisphere has little to do with it, whereas west versus east has a lot to do with it. I admit I did mistakenly conflate the issues of what planets can be seen from a particular point at a particular time with whether or not it is day (preventing you seeing any at all) or night. You are correct that, wherever you are on the Earth, at any time the same planets are on the night side, but that does not amount to everyone for whom it is night being able to see all the same planets at the same time, no matter what their longitude is.
Consider someone for whom the Sun has recently set in the west, and who can see Venus in the western night sky. (If you can see Venus at all soon after sunset, it will always be to the west.) Now consider someone who is almost 180º to the east of the first person, for whom, at the same point in time, the sun is about to rise. He will not be able to see Venus, which will be behind the Earth for him, and by the time Venus has risen where he is, it will be daylight, so he still will probably not be able to see it.
For Venus and Mercury, this is always the situation, because, in fact, being closer to the Sun than the Earth is, from a God’s eye view looking down from over the pole, they are always on the day side of the Earth, the sunward side. Nevertheless, we can very often see them in the night sky, provided we are at the right longitude at the right time.
For the other planets, it is going to depend where they are in their own orbits. If, for instance, Sun, Earth and Jupiter are more or less in a straight line, in that order, Jupiter will be visible almost all night from anywhere on the night side of the Earth. That is more or less the example that you consider, and it is a very special case. If Jupiter is more toward the sunward side (and sometimes it will actually be on the sunward side, as Venus and Mercury always are), then the situation will be similar to that described for Venus, and at any particular time, people at some longitudes will be able to see it and others at other longitudes will not. (The same applies to Mars and Saturn.)
Your snark is uncalled for. Yes, the situation is more complex than I originally allowed for. I conflated two issues relevant to which planets you can see at a particular time: whether it is day or night for you, and what planets are in your line of sight, on ‘your’ side of the Earth. Both of these depend strongly on your longitude, although not in quite the same way.
Latitude will affect both these issues too, but, because the Earth’s axis is not tilted all that much relative to the ecliptic, except for the far polar regions (where I judged the OP was unlikely to be) its effects are far less significant than those of longitude.
Yes, it makes a huge difference. If it is just after sunset or just before dawn for you (which depends on your longitude) almost half the area of sky that you can see, although it is dark sky and you will be able to see any planets in it, is in fact on the day side, the sunward, side of the Earth, and almost half of the sky on the night side will be out of your line of sight.
That is no opinion, it is a stone cold fact: a matter not just of science but of geometry. Your longitude makes a big, big difference.
No, that seems to be you.
I failed to sufficiently distinguish two relevant issues (in my first post, not my second), although not in a way that really affected the answer to the OP’s question. You appear to be under the quite mistaken impression that your longitude is irrelevant to what you can see in the sky at any particular time. And you were the one who decided to be smug and rude about it.
It depends on what you mean by “at what time”. If you mean right this moment, then it clearly makes a difference, since right now it’s day for me but night for some people at other longitudes. If you mean local time, though, it really doesn’t, except in so far as some locations are closer to the center of their time zone.
No, it isn’t. It’s just a specific example. Your example of not seeing Venus at sunrise when it’s an evening star is just as profound as saying you can’t see Jupiter at high noon. Or just as profound as saying it’s not daytime or nighttime all over the world simultaneously. But if you see Venus at sunset, I’ll see Venus at sunset, no matter how far you are east or west of me, excluding extreme LATITUDES where the sun may not rise or set at all. Longitude has nothing to do with it.
I don’t want to argue third grade astronomy. I made my post so you wouldn’t confuse other people. If you want to go on like you are, knock yourself out.
Sure you will. But, if you are sufficiently far east you won’t be able to see it when I am seeing it. It will be night for both of us, but Venus will not be in your sky. (And this applies not just to Venus, but to all planets anywhere in their orbits, except for the special case of one that is directly overhead at midnight.) The OP asked what it was that he was seeing in the night sky. It was a fairly fresh post when I answered it, so I knew he was asking about what he was seeing about then. We were communicating over the World Wide Web, so I did not know his local time, but I knew he meant “about now.” He did not, however, say where in the world he was. (I made a guess about that which turned out to be right, but I did not know.) What he could see at the time of his posting was very much dependent on his longitude.
I admit the way I put my point about longitude originally was misleading. I should not have said
“just where you are (how far east or west more than north and south) will determine whether they are in the sky at night time or in the day”
but something like
“just where you are (how far east or west more than north and south) will determine whether they are in your current night sky.”
Your reiteration of
is at least as wrong and misleading as anything I ever said. Unless someone is staying up all night to see what planets go by over the whole period, their longitude has everything to do with which planets they are seeing.
People who stay up for three hours after sunset, say, will see the same planets, no matter what their longitude. The only way longitude would matter, in any practical sense, would be if you phoned up your friends all around the world and said “hey, guys, get up and look at the planets right now!”. But that’s even more implausible than someone staying up all night.