This month is a great month for planets! If you go out on a dark night you can see and feel for yourself how we are part of the solar system.
Look low in the west, half an hour after sunset, you can see Venus - the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon. Now wave your arms around in an arc going from Venus low in the west, over the south and then towards the south-east, and you will bump into two more planets in the night sky – the red planet Mars, and Saturn which is yellowish in colour.
Ancient people knew of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn because they are all so easy to see with your own eyes - they are all bright objects that can even be seen through our light polluted skies. However, Mercury cannot be seen at the moment since it is too close to the Sun (Mercury passed between us and the Sun on the 28th of April), and Jupiter is above the morning side of the Earth, and so we can only see Jupiter very early in the morning.
But do take a look for Venus, Mars and Saturn, the bright planets in this months evening sky. They are forming a beautiful arc across the night sky, which really highlights that we live close to the centre of the very flat solar system.
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