Caoimhín's Content

With so many interesting things up in the morning as we come to the end of July, that is where we are going to focus today. This especially includes the planets, with three visible to the naked eye, and two more with a sufficient telescope. We don’t even have to wait until early in the morning to see Saturn. Saturn is going to be right next to the Moon on the night of the 24th into the morning of the 25th, and the Moon is only a little past full on those dates. Both the Moon and Saturn will come up just a little after sunset, and stay in the sky until sunrise. The Moon will add a little bit of extra light, but it will move further across the sky over the course of the weekend, eventually passing by Jupiter and Mars.

For those two planets, we will need to wait until a lot closer to sunrise. To catch these planets, you do need to look over towards the East. We are still quite close to summertime meaning Jupiter and Mars will be reasonably high in the sky by the time they are over due East. They won’t be rising directly out of the East, but the East-Northeast, a little further North than where you might expect. While the planets climb higher in the sky, the sky will also brighten from the sunrise. As early as 3 o’clock the glow of the Sun will begin to interfere with our view. Thankfully, if you go out early enough, it won’t be incredibly bright and the planets will still be reasonably high in the sky. I took a closer look at the planet Uranus in one of my recent pieces. If you caught that one, you’ll know that Uranus is up in the morning, almost making a triangle with the Pleiades and Mars. The Pleiades or the Seven Sisters will look pretty faint from the city, giving one or two sisters rather than 7, but they can still be recognized by how close together they are. This many planets gives you many points on the line of the ecliptic, and if you follow the path of the ecliptic from the sunrise through Jupiter, Mars, Uranus and up towards the Moon and Saturn, just before the Moon is Neptune. Uranus is barely visible to the naked eye under perfect conditions, and Neptune certainly isn’t visible without a telescope. Jupiter, Mars and Saturn, however are easy to see even from the city. Although this region of the sky has been featured in a few recent pieces, I haven’t given good close-up of any of these planets recently.

Jupiter and Mars are two of the best planets to look at multiple nights in a row. If you take a look at Saturn over the course of multiple different nights, you can, with good enough telescope, see Saturn’s moons changing position. However, this is much easier to see with Jupiter. Even with a reasonably small telescope, you can see Jupiter’s four largest moons, the Galilean moons, as long as they are in the right positions. They will be in different positions on different days, it looks like all four of them will be visible on the morning of the 27th. With a more powerful telescope, you might even see that one of the moons is orange. That one should be Io, red and orange thanks to lava and sulfur. Even with a small telescope or a big pair of binoculars you can see those moons changing position from night to night. If you have a even more magnification then you can see some of the detail in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. Of course, as a gas giant, it’s not really Jupiter’s surface. Even if your telescope can only resolve Jupiter as a disc, under good conditions you should see the stripes just barely. It can be tough to tell if the Great Red Spot is visible or not unless the stripes are truly visible. With an incredibly big telescope, lots of details of Jupiter can be visible. Luckily, the Great Red Spot is such a big feature of Jupiter, bigger than the planet Earth, that it is visible as long as you can see the stripes clearly. If you can see the stripes, then there’s a good chance you’ll notice if one of them has this bulge on at, that’s the Great Red Spot. If you don’t get to see the Great Red Spot try again the next day and the next day, if it’s missing for 2 days it should be visible on the third. If the Great Red Spot is on the edge the planet, then it can little bit tricky to see. Waiting another couple of days will give the planet time to turn until the Spot facing straight at us. Close the very end of the month, there will be a chance to see the Great Red Spot pointing straight at us. Between one night and the next, you can visibly see the difference on Jupiter’s upper atmosphere or in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, even if the Great Red Spot isn’t visible. This is easier with a more powerful telescope but it is doable with medium sized telescopes. With smaller telescopes you’ve at least got a chance to see the Galilean moons.

Quite near to Jupiter there is another planet in the sky, the Red Planet, Mars. Mars will be right underneath the Pleiades, just above the V of the Hyades in Taurus. Mars is another good planet to take a closer look at, as long as your telescope is good enough to show some of the surface features. You do need, at least a medium sized telescope, somewhere around 6 inches or 150 millimeters least wide, although a little wider would be better, around 8 inches or 200 millimeters. Mars does have quite a high contrast between it’s paler reddish-orange areas, and it’s darker areas, presumed to be caused by old volcanic activity, as well as the ice caps. The ice caps of Mars really stand out against the blackness of space and the redness of the planet. Going through a couple of days, you can see difference as the planet rotates. Looking at one of the more pale areas of Mars, the Tharsis region, lets us see the Tharsis Volcanos and Olympus Mons, as well as Valles Marineris, the Mariner Valley. After a few days of Mars’s rotation being out of sync with ours, we’ll instead more of the darker regions like Syrtis Major Planum. By going through a couple of weeks at least, there will be changes to what you can see on the surface of of Mars, but you do need a reasonably good telescope to do so. Even if Mars only looks like a small reddish ball, you go through a few days, especially if you take photographs to compare, then you might see the shift in colour, just about. Mars’s moons, Phobos and Deimos, are tiny, they’re only the size of asteroids. This makes them incredibly tough to catch, when I say they’re the size of asteroids, I mean normal asteroids, only a few tens of kilometers in diameter, not giant things like Ceres.

We know that Uranus is out in the direction of Mars, but we’re not really going to see it with our eyes, definitely not from a city sky. The Pleiades are there, and they will be visible even with some light pollution. They’re a reasonable target for binoculars, as are the Hyades, though they are a little lower in the sky. Uranus is between and to the West of Mars and the Pleiades, but requires a big binoculars or telescope to see even as a blue dot. Neptune is much tougher to see, even with assistance, but it is over towards Saturn. The Moon will sit in between Saturn and Neptune on the night of the 24th and morning of the 25th. Saturn and the Moon will get even closer next month, but even this month the extra light of the Moon can affect your view,. In the Stellarium software, as you zoom in and the Moon goes out of view, it’s influence practically disappears. In the real sky, the light of the Moon will still be bathing the area around you and your telescope, and it will still impact your view. With a reasonably large telescope, we can see five of Saturn’s moons, including a good clear view of Titan. This does require a good telescope, but not a really big telescope. Even about 8 or 10 inches, 200 to 250 millimeters across, will often start to show you Saturn’s Rings. At the moment we’re seeing the Rings almost edge on, they’re not going to look their best at this time of year. This makes them look extra thin. As we move around the Sun and as Saturn moves around the Sun our view will change. Both the Earth and Saturn are tilted a little bit with respect the Sun, both having a slight orbital inclination and a bit of an axial tilt. This means we’ll see these Rings at a slightly different angle when we reach other parts of our year and also when Saturn reaches other parts of its year. Saturn’s tilt needs to change with respect to us, and that is essentially its tilt with respect to the Sun, so its motion around the Sun definitely matters for our view.

To give ourselves the best chance to see details through a telescope, we’ll shift our view out to the countryside, because everything looks a bit better in the countryside. If you want to take a closer look at anything, I have to recommend going out where it’s dark to give you the best possible view. The glow of sunrise won’t cause objects to disappear as quickly. Despite this, it’s still a good idea to aim for the highest level of darkness you can get, especially if we are taking a closer look with a telescope, even if that puts the planets a little lower in the sky. It’s only going to get so dark with the Moon so close to full, but we can take a closer look regardless. Starting with Jupiter and a very big pair of binoculars. With a very big pair of binoculars, you can see Jupiter’s largest moons and therefore you can see them changing over a couple of different days. Even with a smaller binoculars, still something of reasonable size, you can see a little bit of a bulge where one of the moons is. Moving onto a telescope with a reasonable ocular, if we go through a few days you can very clearly see Jupiter’s moons changing. This is with a 60 by 700, or just about 2 inches wide by 30 inches long, even with no extra Barlow lenses to help. With those added on we can see Jupiter’s stripes. Moving through a few days brings various moons in and out of view. With those moon’s kind of getting in the way, it’s tough to tell where the Great Red Spot is, but it’s definitely in there somewhere. Moving up to a significantly larger telescope, a Celestron C11, close to 11 inches aperture, or around 280 mm wide is a good example. With a telescope like that, you can certainly see the Great Red Spot. It should be visible on the 24th and the 26th. Great Red Spot may appear just on the Eastern edge of the planet, the bottom left. or top right if the image is inverted. If you wait a little bit longer for Jupiter to rise a little bit higher in the sky, that spot would move across the surface as the planet rotates, giving you a chance to see it a little bit better. When doing this you need to be careful that you don’t let it get too bright.

While looking in this region, if you are using a telescope, you should see that around the planets and clusters visible to the naked eye, there are also lots of faint fuzzy nebulous shapes. Before taking a closer look at those, we’ll hop over to Mars. You should see some surface details with a reasonably big telescope. Going through a few days will give mars a chance to have turned a little, but it’s tough to notice a change in smaller telescopes. Once you go through a few weeks the change will be more obvious. With some telescopes you might see some bright dots for Mars’s moons, but seeing any detail in them would be incredibly incredibly difficult. Even with a reasonably big telescope, without a good combination of eyepieces and lenses, along with good conditions, not much more than a fuzzy red disc is visible for Mars. Mars is close to us but Mars is small, and we can see here with only big binoculars, we’re definitely not seeing any surface details on Mars. Neptune and Uranus would both require a large telescope to see anything of note, with very few options revealing more than bluish discs.

While using a telescope or binoculars in this area, it’s well worth having a look around for other things. If we take a look up here to the Pleiades while we’re using a binoculars or a telescope, you will get fantastic view of the Seven Sisters, they always look great and are easy to spot with the naked aye as well. There are a few nice nebulae over in this direction as well, but they aren’t visible to the naked eye, so some hunting around may be required. Looking just a little above and to the left of the Pleiades, you might see a little bit of colour, the nebula LBN 777, the Baby Eagle Nebula. With a bigger telescope you can get to see some of the nice colours in better detail. Our vague view through a very big pair of binoculars would be comparable to our view through a smaller telescope. Continuing to look around this region you can see that there are some really nice nebulae to be seen. One example are the Tadpoles, a group of dark nebulae backlit by a nice bluish colour.

These are just a few of the lovely things visible in the sky in the morning over the next couple of days, with most of them really visible well into next month. In fact, many of these objects are only going to get easier to see as we move forward into August. This gives you a chance to prepare to take a look. The next time you get a chance to head into the countryside, this is the region of the sky you should be pointing your telescope. I hope you enjoyed this description of the early morning sky in late July, and I hope you get a chance to see some of these things in the real sky yourself. If you enjoyed this piece then please consider subscribing to my website and YouTube channel. Most importantly, I hope you come back to check out my next piece.