What’s up in Tuarangi

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Enjoy the night sky each week, as we give you the latest on stargazing.

SEE WITH THE NAKED EYE 

• The Sun is in the zodiacal constellation of Virgo.
• The Moon’s current phase is a Waxing Gibbous. The next full Moon will be 29 September.
• Mercury is in Leo. It is 160 million kilometres from Earth.
• Venus is in Leo visually very close to the Sun. It is 73 million kilometres from Earth.
• Mars is visually in the zodiacal constellation Virgo, at a distance of 80 million kilometres.
• Jupiter is in the constellation of Aries at a distance of 624 million kilometres
• Saturn is visually in Aquarius, very close to Jupiter and is 1.331 billion km away from Earth.
   
   

SEE WITH BINOCULARS AND TELESCOPE

• Uranus is in Aries. It has a visual magnitude of +5.8. It’s 18 times further away from the Sun than the Earth. Light from Uranus travels for two and a half hours to reach our eyes here on Earth. 
• Neptune is in Pisces It’s 29 times further away from the Sun than the Earth. Light takes approximately 4 hours to reach us from Neptune. At a visual magnitude of +7.8 you will need binoculars or telescopes to see it. From this distance, a telescope on Earth cannot see the details of the planet.
• Pluto in Sagittarius is very close to Jupiter. We cannot see Pluto with the naked eye, as it has a magnitude of +16.5. 34 times further away from the Sun than the Earth, it takes light more than 4 hours and a half to reach us from Pluto. From this distance, a telescope on Earth cannot see details of the dwarf planet.

Of course, none of the planets make light of their own, what we see are the features of each planet illuminated by the light from the Sun that gets reflected by our Solar System companions.

After dark adaptation and under the very best observing conditions, the average limiting magnitude of the human eye is about magnitude 6.5.