Can you identify the planets in the night sky?

Can you identify the planets in the night sky?

If you have never studied astronomy or somehow have little knowledge about up sky heaven, then you are not able to identify planets in the night sky. Have you ever wondered how the planets look like from our Earth? I’m sure you have never noticed the bright shiny object in the sky. It seems to be a star in the night sky. But it is brighter than the usual star can be seen in the below picture.

Let me acknowledge you about some facts by which you can easily differentiate between planets and stars in the night sky.

First of all the general definition of both the object which may everyone know.

The Planets:

A celestial body moving in an elliptical orbit around a star. A planet is a large object such as Jupiter or Earth that orbits a star. Planets are smaller than stars, and they do not produce light. A star and everything which orbits it are called a star system. There are eight planets in our Solar System.

The Stars: 

A huge ball of gas held together by gravity. The central core of a star is extremely hot and produces energy. Some of this energy is released as visible light, which makes the star glow.

How to Distinguish Between stars and Planets in the Night Sky

• One of the easiest ways to Distinguish between stars and planets in the night sky is by looking to see if the object twinkles or shimmers. This can usually be detected with the naked eye if you have a clear view of the sky. 

• Planets rise in the East and set in the West. They tend to follow a similar celestial path across our sky as the sun and moon. 

• Planets are always found along an imaginary belt across the night sky called the ecliptic. This belt is not actually a visible object. The easiest way to find the ecliptic is to note the location and trajectory of the sun and moon in the sky relative to your location on the Earth. The sun's path across our sky is very close to the path of planets along the ecliptic.

• Stars may also appear along ecliptic but Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are significantly brighter than the surrounding stars. This is due to their proximity to the sun since their "brightness" is just reflected sunlight.

Why do stars twinkle?

 Stars do not really twinkle, they just appear to twinkle when seen from the surface of Earth.  Stars are so far away from Earth that, even through large telescopes, they appear only as pinpoints. 

 When starlight enters our atmosphere it is affected by the movement of air in the atmosphere of Earth (atmospheric layers have different temperatures and densities).

This causes the starlight to get slightly bent as it travels from the distant star through the atmosphere down to us on the ground. This means that some of the light reaches us directly and some gets bent slightly away. To our eyes, this makes the star seem to twinkle.

You can clearly observe them from binoculars or a telescope so grab one and enjoy.