About this episode
This episode discusses how to locate Venus, Uranus, and the Pleiades star cluster in the night sky.
It’s hard to ask for a better signpost for finding things in the night sky than the planet Venus. Right now it’s the brilliant “evening star,” low in the west as twilight fades. And it points the way to two other wonders: the planet Uranus and the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades is fairly easy to find on its own. Its brightest stars form a tiny dipper shape. In fact, the Pleiades is often mistaken for the Little Dipper. But that dipper is in the north, anchored by the North Star. Despite its prominence, the Pleiades is best appreciated with a technique known as averted vision – seeing it from the corner of your eye. And Venus offers a good chance to try it. Look at Venus, then see if you can see the sparkly cluster to its right. They’re separated by the width of a couple of fingers held at arm’s length. Uranus is about one finger width below Venus. It’s the third-largest planet in the solar system. But it’s so far away that it looks tiny and faint. It’s an easy target for binoculars or a small telescope, though. It looks like a faint star. A telescope reveals something interesting about Venus – it doesn’t…
People in this episode
Host: Billy Henry
Topics covered
- night sky
- planets
- star clusters
- astronomy techniques
- gibbous phase
- binoculars
- telescope
Keywords
- Venus
- Uranus
- Pleiades
- night sky
- gibbous phase
- binoculars
- telescope
- astronomy
- star clusters
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Pleiades, Little Dipper
Places: Earth, Sun, Venus, Uranus
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