What planets are showing themselves currently?

I work the graveyard shift. As I was taking a break for a smoke, I noticed two unshimmering star-like objects chilling out with the moon.

What are they? They were both blue-white, unshimmering, were close to the moon, and one was a touch bigger than most stars appear. What planets are visible to the western US right now?

-Sam

You probably saw Jupiter & Saturn. Both are near the moon today. Jupiter should have been very bright & Saturn would be visible, but much dimmer. Jupiter can look white to the eye, but Saturn kind of has a tan/yellow color. Perhaps you saw a star.

Let me know the time & place and I’ll check my skymap.

From the Sky & Telescope Website…(planetary round-up for this week)

MERCURY can be spotted very low in the east-northeast during early dawn. Look for it very far to the lower left of bright Jupiter and Saturn. (Don’t confuse it with Betelgeuse, far to its right, or Pollux or Castor, far to its left.)

VENUS is barely visible through the glare of sunset. Scan for it just above the west-northwest horizon about 20 or 25 minutes after sundown. Binoculars will help. Venus will gradually emerge into better view during the coming months.

MARS is hidden in the glare of sunrise.

JUPITER and SATURN (magnitudes -2.1 and +0.2, respectively) rise around 2 a.m. daylight saving time and shine high in the east by dawn. Jupiter is the brighter one; Saturn is to its upper right. They appear 6 degrees apart, in the constellation Taurus. Above Jupiter is the Pleiades cluster; below it is orange Aldebaran.

Couldn’t have been Neptune. That planet’s doing thirty days for indecent exposure. And don’t get me started on Uranus.

I think we have a winner!

Thanks for the reply :slight_smile:

-Sam

And this morning, Earth is occupying just less than 50% of the sky. :D:D

In the future, there’s a website that has some freeware for astronomy. It’s http://www.fourmilab.to/

There are a few things, including a screen-saver that shows the current sky map from anywhere on the earth. (It’s called Sky, and I’m using that currently without any problems.) There’s also a software application called Home Planet that is much more comprehensive. I haven’t used it yet, but I’m going to give it a try today.

A month ago, Jupiter and Saturn were very close together, even closer than now. In fact, they won’t be that close again for another twenty years. They’ll drift apart until one will be on the other side of the solar system from the other.

http://www.heavens-above.com is the best place to get info like this. You can enter in where you are, and it will give you summaries of when you can expect to see planets, satellites, etc. Pretty cool!