THIS MONTH’S PLANETS
Mars takes pride of place in the night sky and is easy to find for morning stargazers
PLANET OF THE MONTH
Our planet of the month this issue is Mars. It’s been given that honour because it’s bright, easy to find in the sky and has a lot of interesting things going on around it. Mars is famously known as the Red Planet. However, that nickname is a bit misleading. When you look at Mars in the sky, you’ll see that it shines with more of a marmalade or topaz orange colour than fire engine or blood red. Its colour is due to the fine iron oxide dust that covers its surface, in some places so thickly that over millions of years the soft Martian winds have blown it into rippling dunes.
This month Mars will be an evening object, very obvious to the naked eye as a bright orange-red star in the constellation of Taurus, not far from the V-shaped Hyades star cluster and close to much brighter – and much bluer – Jupiter, as well. At the start of September it will be rising in the east before midnight, and will then be visible all through the night until it fades from view low in the west as the sky brightens with the approach of sunrise. If you have binoculars they won’t be able to show you Mars’ disc, as they won’t be powerful enough, but they will enhance Mars’ beautiful colour.