The ancients had beautifully dark skies, dusted with thousands of stars of varying brightness. At some point, they noticed that five of these stars were quite different from the rest.  Not only were they conspicuously bright, but they also moved against the background of the sky, while all the rest were fixed in place.  These movements weren’t all at the same speed, and varied over time, so these special stars became known as “Planets“, from the greek word for … Continue reading →

As one of the classical planets, Venus has been a familiar sight to humanity ever since we first started looking at the stars. Like Mercury, Venus’s movements are bound to the Sun but the similarities end there. Venus moves more slowly, and wanders further. It also shines extremely brightly – only the Sun and the Moon are brighter than Venus. Venus is easily identified as the Evening or Morning star and often passes near to the Moon, putting on a … Continue reading →

  Neptune is the only planet that cannot be seen with the naked eye (assuming you aren’t still resisting the formal IAU definition of a planet…).  It is extremely far away and very dim, so much so that it wasn’t even discovered visually – its existence had to be inferred mathematically. Herschell may have turned the scientific world on its head by discovering a sixth planet in the sky (We don’t count earth since it is under our feet and is technically the … Continue reading →