Plenty to see after dark in a clear sky

OVER the recent run of clear nights, those looking skyward may have noticed Jupiter gleaming brightly above the south-eastern horizon as darkness falls – and above and to its right, the planet Saturn.

I got out my birdwatching telescope this week and endeavoured to have a closer look.

It isn’t easy searching a black sky for planets through the viewfinder – up a bit from the silhouette of the tree in the garden, then left a bit and... darkness, a bit more darkness and... try again. But when I finally managed to focus on Jupiter and increase the magnification carefully, with every tripod wobble threatening to lose the position, it revealed three of its four large moons: two on one side and one on the other. Quite a sight.

Apparently this giant planet has 80 known moons, and possibly more, but the big four can be seen with a simple telescope or even powerful binoculars, and are known as the Galilean moons as they were discovered back in the early 1600s by the father of astronomy Galileo.

My telescope is designed for observing avian rather than celestial wonders, though it still worked well enough.

I next turned my attention to Saturn, which is less bright and was harder to pinpoint with the lens. Zooming in enabled me to see it had a slightly flattened appearance and to just make out a ring around it. Amazing to witness this phenomenon, even if a rather fuzzy one through less-than-ideal optical equipment, confirming that those pictures in school books were indeed correct.

Of course you don’t need a telescope to appreciate the night sky, and sitting back in my west Dartmoor garden on a moonless night I could observe plenty of constellations, the faint blur of the Milky Way, and the regular sight of satellites passing overhead in various directions. They appear far higher than aeroplanes, added to which they don’t have flashing lights on them, and track in straight lines at a steady and decent speed, some being brighter than others. Over the course of half an hour of sky-watching you appreciate just how busy it is up there with satellite traffic.

Finally, my patience was rewarded with a decent shooting star. I have never had a great deal of luck with meteor showers, such as the Perseid and Leonid events. The term “shower” does rather imply tails of light raining down, but I have often struggled to see many at all. So it is rewarding to get lucky by simply spending time out of doors after dark. And I always feel a strange connection with people of the past, gathered around fires or guarding livestock, who must have regularly witnessed shooting stars and known the night sky like the back of their hands.