Look up to Uranus! The ice giant will make a rare appearance TONIGHT hovering between the moon and Mars
- The ice giant makes a rare appearance after sunset on January 20
- To see Uranus, locate Mars and then slowly scan for the crescent moon
- You may need binoculars, but they should look like a fuzzy blue disc
- According to NASA, Mercury will come into the picture in the second two weeks of January
Uranus will be on display to the world tonight.
NASA reports that the ice giant will be visible a few hours after sunset on January 20.
The seventh planet from the sun shines at the edge of the naked eye, especially in areas of light pollution, so it’s notoriously difficult to see.
But stargazers with a telescope or binoculars should be able to see it hanging in the night sky between the moon and Mars.
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Uranus will be visible from Earth as a faint bluish disk between the Moon and Mars after sunset in January 2020
“ Find the crescent moon and the red planet in the few hours after dark that night, ” advises NASA’s What’s Up skywatching guide.
Mars will stand out in the night sky with an orange, reddish hue near the moon, Axel Diaz, a solar system ambassador for NASA, reports.
“People say you can’t find the planet Uranus – it’s very hard to find, it’s very faint, it’s very small,” Diaz says.
The best way to find it is to look at the moon. Look at the moon and look at Mars. ‘
Wednesday also sees a first quarter moon that was already far above the horizon at sunset.
In the northern hemisphere of the moon, craters such as Aristotle, Atlas and Hercules should be easily distinguishable.
And tonight, Pisces will be visible near the boundary it shares with the constellations of Cetus and Aries.
About 1.82 billion miles from us, Uranus has so far been visited only by a single spacecraft from Earth, NASA’s Voyager 2, in 1986.
That might not be a big deal: A 2018 report from the University of Oxford confirmed that hydrogen sulfide gas swirling around the upper atmosphere gives Uranus a stink of rotten eggs.
‘If an unhappy human ever descended through the clouds of Uranus, they would face very unpleasant and dire conditions,’ warned astronomer Patrick Irwin, ‘
What’s worse, NASA says the magnetic bubble around Uranus is leading its harmful atmosphere into space.
The atmospheric loss is due to the planet’s warped magnetic field causing the magnetosphere to wobble “like a badly thrown football,” the agency said in a statement last spring.
This causes parts of Uranus’ atmosphere to leak out into charged plasma bubbles called plasmoids, which pinch off the magnetic field as it moves through the sun.
Scientists have determined that the plasmoid around Uranus measures about 127,000 miles by 250,000 miles and has drawn between 15 and 55 percent of Uranus’ atmosphere from the planet.
The seventh planet from the sun shines at the edge of the naked eye, especially in areas of light pollution, so it’s notoriously difficult to see. But stargazers with a telescope or binoculars should be able to see it hanging in the night sky between the Moon and Mars
For a less gruesome bit of astronomy, NASA also indicated that Mercury will come into view in the last two weeks of January.
Mercury has little atmosphere and would not have much odor.
You need an unobstructed view to the west to see the planet as it will appear just a few degrees above the horizon after sunset, starting in the middle of the month.
‘This small planet orbits much closer to the sun than the Earth, which means that it also revolves around the sun much faster and completes its’ year’ in about a quarter of the time it takes Earth to circle once go ‘, said the agency.
“That’s why we have the chance to see Mercury in the sky about every three months, as it appears to be darting back and forth from one side of the sun to the other.”