How to spot the planets hiding in plain sight
There are 5 planets visible with to the naked eye, even in the most light-polluted cities
This video was produced by Trevor Kjorlien as part of the CBC Creator Network. Learn more about the Creator Network here.
Most people are aware that if you live in the city, light pollution limits your view of the night sky. If you want to see lots of stars, comets and the Milky Way, you have to get out into the countryside, where the sky is dark.
However noble the cause, awareness campaigns to educate people about light pollution have had an unintended side effect: people think you can't see anything in the urban night sky except a handful of bright stars and the moon.
So if you are a city dweller and you don't look up, what are you missing out on?
The planets.
Even in the most light-polluted skies, we can see five planets with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
How to find the planets
It's not unusual to be able to see the planets. Normally, some appear in the evening and some in the morning, depending on where they are in their orbit around the sun.
How do you know when and where to look?
In June 2022, we had a rare opportunity: all the naked-eye planets were visible in the early morning. At dawn, you could see all five of them lined up before the sun rose and washed their light away.
Why did they appear to line up, as they did then?
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In the northern hemisphere, the sun appears to move through the sky in the south.
Now imagine a line was drawn out behind the sun as it travels in the sky through the day. Astronomers call this "the path of the ecliptic."
At night, you can roughly follow this imaginary line, and that's where the planets can be found. This is because the planets all orbit the Sun on the same plane, much like a frisbee or a vinyl record. Because all the planets travel more or less on the same plane, from our view on Earth, they appear to line up and are always visible in the southern sky from the northern hemisphere.
Embedded in our daily lives
We can see seven significant celestial objects with the naked eye: the sun, the moon and the five planets closest to the sun.
Where else do we see the number seven in our day-to-day lives?
In the calendar.
Through the magic of myth and etymology, each day of the week corresponds to these celestial objects.
- Monday is moon day, named for the moon. (In French, la lune becomes lundi.)
- Tuesday, named for Tiw, the Germanic god of war, corresponds to the Roman war god Mars (in French, mardi).
- Wednesday is named for Woden, the Germanic god corresponding to the Roman god Mercury (in French, mercredi).
- Thursday is named for Thor, the Norse god corresponding to the Roman god Jupiter. (In French, from the Latin Jovis, a name for Jupiter, we get jeudi.)
- Friday is named for Frigga, the Germanic goddess corresponding to the Roman goddess of love, Venus (in French, vendredi).
- Saturday is named for Saturn.
- Sunday is named for the sun.
Think about which day you're reading this. Which celestial object does it correspond to?
Not only are the planets hiding in plain sight in the urban night sky, they're hiding in our calendars — embedded in our daily lives.
The Creator Network, which works with emerging visual storytellers to bring their stories to CBC platforms, produced the piece. If you have an idea for the Creator Network, you can send your pitch here.
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