Comets have always been special. In ancient times, the sky was a stately ordered place, with the Sun, Moon, Stars and Planets all moving in their stately and predictable paths. But every now and then, something strange and new would appear. It would start as a fuzzy star with a misty trail behind it, growing from week to week until it formed a spectacular arc across the sky before fading away and vanishing. This was not a part of the … Continue reading →
Saturn is the last of the Classical Planets, those bright wandering stars which our distant ancestors thousands of years ago tried to explain with stories of gods and heros. As the most distant of the five, it moves the slowest, shining with a dusty beige light. The Greeks and Romans recognised it as the leader of the Titans by its stately motion and it’s unassuming appearance. Saturn was the Roman name for Cronus, who was one of the Titans … Continue reading →
Mars is the third of the classic planets. It is not one of the brightest, but it stands out for two reasons: It has a vivid orange-red colour and it makes large retrograde motions in the sky every year and a half. As we watch Mars from night to night, it slowly moves to the East. Every now and then (whenever Earth overtakes Mars in its orbit), Mars stops moving and reverses direction. After about a month, it resumes its normal … 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 →
Uranus is the seventh planet out from the Sun, and the first to discovered in recorded history. Although it is technically visible to the naked eye, it shines faintly enough that it appears to be just another tiny dot in an ocean of stars. It is so inconspicuous that even though it appears in some of Galileo’s sketches of Jupiter as a tiny star in the background, he never noticed it moving between viewing sessions. It wasn’t until 1781 that … Continue reading →
