Planets Visible Tonight Utah (2024)

FAQs

What planet is visible in Utah? ›

If you see a bright object that looks like a star and it's not moving (moving “stars” could be airplanes or satellites), it might be a planet. Look at your star map and see if the star-like object shows up as one of the stars on the map. If it doesn't, you are probably seeing a planet.

Planets – Five planets in our solar system are easily observed without a telescope: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus is just barely visible for those with excellent eyesight under dark-sky conditions, provided you know where to look.

The night sky tonight and on any clear night offers an ever-changing display of fascinating objects you can see, from stars and constellations to bright planets, the moon, and sometimes special events like meteor showers.

What Planets Are Visible By the Naked Eye? The first step to identifying planets is to know which planets are possible to see without a telescope. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are the five brightest planets in our night sky and, therefore, observable by most people.

Venus orbits in closer proximity to the sun than it does to Earth so it's easiest to find by first locating the sun. Venus can be seen in the west during the evening and to the east in the early morning before the sun rises. Venus appears as a bright light, you'll need to use a telescope in order to see anything more.

If you want to record the planets as more than just dots, point your phone's camera down the pre-focused eyepiece of a telescope. Known as afocal imaging, this takes a bit of practice and a steady hand! Some even adopt this technique with binoculars as a means of taking a photograph through a pair of binoculars.

Mercury is our closest companion because it is the closest to the sun and has the smallest orbit, which means it is more often on the same side of the sun as Earth, and even when it's not, it's never that far away. Meanwhile, Venus and Mars spend long periods of time much farther away from Earth.

You can only see Venus just before sunrise or just after sunset, when it is in a part of its orbit that is just barely visible from Earth's night side. A similar situation makes Mercury visible only during these times also.

Planets are usually much brighter than stars. They are closer to earth so they begin to look more like a disk, rather than a tiny dot. Look for the bright planets. Although some of the planets may be in their apparition period, they may be harder to see if they aren't one of the brighter planets.

What object is in the sky tonight? ›

The inner planets Mercury and Venus. Because their orbits are inside Earth's orbit they never stray too far from the Sun. They set shortly after the Sun at sunset and rise shortly ahead of the Sun before sunrise.

A red sky appears when dust and small particles are trapped in the atmosphere by high pressure. This scatters blue light leaving only red light to give the sky its notable appearance.

The bald, desert formations have been shaped and etched by wind and water, and when one mineral is more prominent than others, the landscape becomes white and moonlike. Just down the road, everything is monochromatically greenish-gray or iron red — very Mars-like.

Utah is also one of the best places for capturing the Milky Way in North America, but it matters when you go. The best time for astrophotography is around the new Moon, when the skies are as dark as possible, but late March to June has milder temperatures, clear skies and the Milky Way rising in the night sky.

Utah's sky is a deep and satisfying blue due to our aridity and high elevation.