What’s in the night sky this week? Glad you asked!
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There’s plenty, and a nice surprise I’ll tell you about shortly!
But first, armed with your binoculars, find a nice dark place away from the glare of the street lights and pick a comfy spot either on a rug or a deck chair that you can lay back in.
Wait about five to 10 minutes and allow your eyes to adapt to the darkness.
See that band of stars stretching across the sky from one side to the other?
That’s the Milky Way, full of more stars than you can count.
Search along the Milky Way with your binoculars and watch for “fuzzy” patches.
Stop and have a look, you might have found a rich star cluster or a gassy nebula.
This is called a sky scan and I do it all the time.
While you’re at it look a little to the right of the Southern Cross and pan around there too.
This is a rich area for sky spotting or panning so take it slowly OK.
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WHAT was the surprise I promised you?
There was an unusual event in the pre-dawn sky last week that was spectacular.
It’s called a “Dance of the Planets” and they don’t happen all that often!
What you would have seen are the three well known planets Venus, Mars and giant Jupiter all in the same small part of the eastern morning sky together.
They were best observed just before sunrise, until the sky starts to brighten.
Venus and Jupiter were very close and rose within minutes of each other from about 5am. Mars was already there a little higher up.
On Friday there was a slender crescent Moon joining the group at the same time to top off what was a great photo opportunity.
Very close conjunctions are just a grand naked eye spectacle so bracket your shots, try different exposures and use a tripod.
It can be very exciting to see more than one planet in the same field of view of your telescope.
Some people claim that when the alignments of the planets occur their increased gravity wreaks havoc on Earth.
It’s not true, the planets combined gravity is insignificant and the influence of the planets that are even further away is even less.
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- David Reneke is one of Australia’s leading astronomers, lecturers and teachers. He’s a feature writer for Australasian Science magazine and a science correspondent for ABC and commercial radio. Get David’s free astronomy newsletter at www.davidreneke.com