Summertime Planets

Two planets are be brightening up the night sky all summer long. They are close together and easy to spot. Try to find them tonight! 

Look towards the southwest after sunset, and you can easily see what looks like two bright stars, one orange-red and one white, close together. What looks like two bright stars are really two bright planets, Mars and Saturn! See the star chart below, set for Peoria at 10 PM.

Click for larger image. Image Credit: Stellarium.

Mars is in the constellation of Virgo the Maiden, and Saturn can be found in Libra the Scales this summer. Image Credit: Stellarium.

Mars is in the constellation of Virgo this summer, a faint constellation with one bright star, Spica. Spica is a blue giant, and the 15th brightest star in the night sky. In Latin, Spica means "ear of grain". The Greeks and Romans associated Virgo with the goddess of wheat or agriculture, Demeter/Ceres, making Virgo an appropriate spring and summer constellation for the Midwest as well. 

Johannes Hevelius created one of the best loved collections of constellation drawings in 1687, called Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia. The beautiful images are now in the common domain. You can find most of them here.

Saturn is in the constellation of Libra the Balancing Scales, so named by the Greeks and Romans because in their time, the Sun rose in Libra at the autumnal equinox - when the amount of day and night is balanced. 

Also a drawing by Johannes Hevelius.

To see some beautiful images of Saturn, check out my previous blog posts, here, and here. Look below for some of my favorite photos from Mars!

Do you know about the Mars Curiosity Rover yet?! If you don't, stop reading this and look up some of its pictures. Curiosity took this picture of itself after completing its first Martian year looking for evidence that liquid water existed on Mars in the past. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Hebes Chasma, a canyon near Valles Marineris. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

This image shows the changing soil patterns over a year's time, most likely caused by dry ice. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Martian sand dunes, covered in dry ice. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

The rover Spirit captured this gorgeous natural light image of a sunset on Mars in 2005. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell

You can learn how to spot the planets and find the constellations at the Peoria Riverfront Museum's Dome Planetarium. Find our schedule and show descriptions here. 
And catch the latest news about the universe at our upcoming evening event, Deep Space Wine!