You could use Stellarium free astronomy softwareįinally, how do we find these planets with a beginners telescope? From this point onward I’m going to assume that you’ve determined exactly where the planets are going to be on the night that you’re doing you’re observing.You could subscribe to a magazine like BBC Sky at Night.Now onto finding the planets, so what’s the best way to know which planets are visible on a given night? There are so many options all of which work equally well. You may also hear the term ‘retrograde’ which simply means that the earth has passed a planet in its orbit just like you might pass another car on the road, and like the car you just passed the planet will briefly appear to be traveling in the other direction as it moves across the sky. Less frequently you may hear the term ‘greatest elongation’ this only refers to Venus and Mercury and occurs when the planet appears farthest from the sun when viewed from earth. Opposition is generally a great time to see a planet with a telescope. I just want to go over a few terms you might hear when researching planets, first you might hear about conjunctions well to put it simply this generally refers to when two or more planets or the moon appear near each other in the sky, you may also hear the term opposition this is when a planet is directly opposite the sun from the earth this also means that the planet is near its closest to Earth and also that it’s the highest in the sky in the middle of the night.
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