ELi ON EARTH: East Lansing Residents Will Have Easy Time Finding Uranus This Week

Image of Uranus with one of its moons creating an eclipse, courtesy of NASA

For the next week or so, Uranus will be easy to find sandwiched between Venus and Mars in a mini conga line of planets. If East Lansing residents look west about an hour after sunset, Venus and Mars will be the brightest objects in the western sky and stacked with Venus on top of Mars. Using binoculars, a viewer will be able to see Uranus below Venus and above Mars. This vertical line of planets, called “conjunction” in astronomy, will be straightest on Wednesday, March 4, 2015.

Uranus is a huge gaseous/icy planet and the seventh planet in the solar system. It orbits the sun beyond Saturn and inside of Neptune, another gaseous/icy planet. Uranus is too dim to see with the naked eye, but it is visible with binoculars if you know where to find it. The conjunction of Venus, Uranus, and Mars should make finding the faint blue dot of Uranus easier than usual.

While East Lansing residents have their binoculars out, the moons of Jupiter will be eclipsing each other this week and the rest of the month. An eclipse occurs when an object passes into the shadow of another object. As an example, on Monday, March 2, 2015, the moon Ganymede will eclipse the moon Io from 11:06 pm until 11:11 pm.  On Thursday, March 5, 2015, Io will partially eclipse Ganymede.

The moons of Jupiter are good targets for planet-gazing with binoculars. If the binoculars are held stable without vibration, a careful observer should see one moon dim as the other passes between it and the sun.  With a telescope powerful enough to see surface colors of Jupiter, it may be possible to see the shadow of one moon cast onto the other.