BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Brad Klein reviews the week’s astronomical highlights with Bethlehem’s ‘Backyard Astronomy Guy,’ Marty McGuire.
This week is a good one to spot the planets that are visible in the night sky, both in evenings and early mornings.
In the evenings, just after sunset, the brightest object in the night sky this week is Venus, playing the role of ‘evening star’. Earlier in the year, the bright planet was only visible in the pre-dawn hours of the early morning, but now it has an eye-catching position in the western evening sky.
If you stay up past midnight, you’ll have a number of other planets to view. The most prominent is the giant planet, Jupiter. Look for it very near the waning gibbous moon late Monday night (Oct 21/22).
“Mars and Saturn will be next most visible in the night sky,” according to McGuire. “Hiding up there only in view of a telescope will be Uranus and Neptune even further out.”
So, with a telescope and an astronomy app, a skilled stargazer could see all the planets except for Mercury in one evening this week.
And to top it off, Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS may still be visible in the Western sky after sunset, as it heads out of our solar system toward deep space.
