Planets come. Planets go. That makes them both confounding and so much fun.
To keep hold of a planet and become friends for life you first have to identify it. These days that's pretty easy with star apps and online guides, including this one, to help point you in the right direction. But the key to "knowing" a planet is keeping track of where it is.
They move, after all. So once you've identified say, Venus, if you return to view it week after week, month after month, you'll soon have its motion in your bones and be able to anticipate its every move. I've been watching Earth's siblings for decades and they've taught me a lot about how the solar system works.
They've also kept me connected to the sky and nature and added beauty to my life. I can't count how many alignments, called conjunctions, I've seen that just make me go "wow." Because the sun, moon and planets all travel the same highway in the sky, the ecliptic, every planet must necessarily spend some time out of view when it passes in the same line of sight as the sun.
At those times it's in the daytime sky and invisible. That's the story with Venus, which has been lost to view in the dazzle of daylight for the past few months. Finally, in August it moves far enough to the east of the sun to partially escape its glare.
Although still low in the west-northwest sky at dusk, the brightest of the planets is now quite easy to spot in binoculars 20-30 minutes after sunset. You can even see it without optical aid as long as wildfire smoke isn't too thick. ADVERTISEMENT I got my first look at the brightest and closest planet on the evening of Aug.
6. To ensure it wouldn't get lost in the trees, I chose a lake view with a low horizon. Although some haze interfered, I quickly found the planet in 8x40 binoculars and then saw it dimly without their help.
I let out a quiet "hello" so as not to disturb the geese that silently glided across the water. As I have for decades, I'll keep an eye on Venus as it once again slowly climbs out of the horizon muck into cleaner, darker skies. It will be out for the rest of the year.
I hope you'll see it soon, too! The sun's been going nuts with sunspots this summer. I haven't seen it this bespeckled in years. Some of these spot groups, which are regions on the sun's surface with potent magnetic fields, produce massive explosions called solar flares.
Under the right conditions, particles sprayed toward Earth from flares and other processes couple with our planet's magnetic field and channel down into the atmosphere to fire up the aurora. From late July to early August, the northern lights have appeared over the northern parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan on at least four occasions. Not all of those nights were clear! Let's hope Friday night, Aug.
9, will be. That's when we expect the next blast to arrive. The timing is such that we should expect to see aurora in the northern sky as soon as late dusk, with the storm continuing through the night.
Although the moon will be out, it's only a crescent and won't affect the view. Often, the aurora will look like pale, white clouds. As your eyes adapt to the darkness you'll soon see the difference.
Clouds either dissipate or gradually drift off in one direction. The aurora stays in the same part of the sky — mostly north, except in big storms when it spills into the southern sky. It also often forms vertical structures called rays or pillars, which actively stretch, grow, fade and regrow.
The aurora is dynamic! Remember that you can use your smartphone to take 3-second (or longer) handheld exposures of the night sky — plenty of time to capture the northern lights. Just hold it up to the sky, tap the screen to focus and then tap the button to take the picture. Two crosses will appear on the screen.
Keep them aligned and your photo will turn out well!.
