Look up at Uranus! The ice giant will make a rare appearance tonight as it hangs between the moon and Mars
- The ice giant makes a rare appearance after sunset on January 20
- To see Uranus, search for Mars and then slowly scan for the crescent moon
- You need binoculars, but it should look like a dull blue disk
- According to NASA, Mercury will face the second two weeks of January
Uranus will be visible to the world tonight.
NASA reports the ice giant will be seen a few hours after sunset on January 20th.
The seventh planet from the sun shines at the edge of naked eye visibility, especially in areas with light pollution, and it is therefore extremely difficult to see.
But astronomers with a telescope or binoculars must be able to see it in the night sky between the moon and Mars.
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Uranus will be visible from Earth as a dull blue disk between the moon and Mars from January 2020
“That night you should find the crescent moon and the Red Planet within hours of it getting dark,” advises NASA’s What’s Skywatching Guide.
Mars will stand out in the night sky with an orange, reddish tint near the moon, reports Axel Diaz, an ambassador of the solar system for NASA.
“People say you can not find the planet Uranus – it’s very difficult to find, it’s very faint, it’s very small,” says Diaz.
‘The best way to find it is to look at the moon. Look at the moon and look at Mars. ‘
On Wednesday there is also a first quarter moon that was already well above the horizon by sunset.
On the moon’s northern hemisphere, craters such as Aristotle, Atlas and Hercules should be easy to choose from.
And tonight, Pisces will be visible near the border it shares with Cetus and Aries constellations.
About 1.82 billion kilometers from us, Uranus has so far only been visited by one terrestrial spacecraft, NASA’s Voyager 2.
This is perhaps not so bad: a 2018 report from the University of Oxford confirmed that hydrogen sulphide gas orbiting its upper atmosphere gives Uranus a greasy rotten egg.
“If an unfortunate person ever descended through Uranus’ clouds, they would be dealing with very unpleasant and hurried conditions,” astronomer Patrick Irwin warned, “
What’s worse, NASA says that the magnetic bubble around Uranus pulls out its harmful atmosphere in space.
The atmospheric loss is due to the planet’s twisted magnetic field causing the magnetosphere to wobble ‘like a bad football’, the agency said in a statement last spring.
This causes parts of Uranus’ atmosphere to leak into charged puddles, called plasmids, which pinch off the magnetic field as it moves through the sun.
Scientists have determined that the plasmoid around Uranus measures approximately 127,000 miles by 250,000 miles and that it has drawn between 15 and 55 percent of Uranus’ atmosphere from the planet.
The seventh planet from the sun shines at the edge of naked eye visibility, especially in areas with light pollution, and it is therefore extremely difficult to see. But astronomers with a telescope or binoculars must be able to see it in the night sky between the moon and Mars
NASA has also indicated that Mercury will be in sight in the last two weeks of January.
Mercury has very little atmosphere and does not smell much.
You need an unobstructed view to the west to see the planet, as it will appear a few degrees above the horizon after sunset, starting in the middle of the month.
‘This little planet orbits the sun much closer than the earth, which means that it also orbits the sun much faster and completes its’ year’, in about a quarter of the time it takes the earth to once to go around, ‘according to the agency.
“That’s why we have the chance to see Mercury in the sky every three months, because it seems to shoot back and forth from one side of the sun to the other.”