Re: CAN YOU SEE THE PLANETS/MOONS FROM EARTH?

Hi Dana,

You sure can see planets and moons from Earth! Besides the Earth's moon, which I'm sure you've seen, you can also see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn from the Earth without a telescope. With binoculars or a small telescope you can see Uranus and some of the big moons of Jupiter (Io, Callisto, Europa and Ganymede) and Saturn (Titan); to see Neptune, Pluto, and the other moons of Jupiter and Saturn you'd need a bigger telescope.

To see the planets, you need to know where to look. Because the Earth and the other planets are circling the Sun, we on Earth see that the planets seem to move around in the sky while the stars stay still. (The ancient Greeks knew this - our word 'planet' comes from their word for 'wanderer'.)

You can find charts that show you where the planets are in the sky in astronomy magazines like Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, and Odyssey (Odyssey is an astronomy magazine just for kids!). Or, you can see lots of NASA pictures of the planets at Welcome to the Planets.

Astronomers have recently started finding planets around stars other than our Sun. There aren't any pictures of these planets yet because you can't see them directly (we find the by looking for the effects they produce on the stars). But we do know something about these planets; you can find out more at this site.

Pauline