This is a fabulous week for viewing planets in the night sky in NC. Saturday night, several planets were visible in the night sky, the air was calm and crisp. Cell phone photography is not the best for night photography; however, we felt the above photo provides an idea of what the sky looked like on Saturday night in the Piedmont region of North Carolina after that cleansing rain we had on Friday. We weren't as interested in seeing planets as we were marveling how well we could see the start.
Here is a LINK to a website that tracks planets visible in the night sky in Greensboro and the times they will rise and the extent to which they will be visible. This last night, here was the reading: Mercury, very difficult to see; Venus, great visibility, Mars, perfect visibility; Jupiter, perfect visibility; Saturn, average visibility; Uranus, average visibility; Neptune, very difficult to see. If you want to visit a planetarium, UNCG, the Greensboro Science Center, Guilford College, GTTC Jamestown, and High Point University all have planetariums and most publish times when they are open to the public. If you keep your eye out, sometimes there are pop up events around town, too. We owe it to those ancient mariners to be able to look up in the sky and to at least identify some of the major constellations.
Happy Monday and happy stargazing.
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