THE SOLAR SYSTEM

My photograph of the waxing crescent Moon and Venus together in the western sky shortly after sunset on August 7, 1978, at 9:15 p.m. The Sun is represented by the sculpture to the right, which is located behind the Bethesda Lutheran Church in Ames, Iowa. Look to the upper left of the Moon where Mars looks like a tiny orange dot. Can you see it? I used a 200 mm telephoto lens and a 2 second exposure using Ektachrome 200 film push processed to 400 iso. Click on the image to enlarge it.

FOR AS LONG as I can remember being interested in astronomy (since the early 1950's), I have also had an interest in the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. I remember reading all the science fiction books I could get my hands on and watching all the science fiction movies of the 50's about ET's. Back then astronomers and the general public knew little about the planets. We often let our imaginations run wild, creating all sorts of scenarios about what the planets were really like. I can also remember my first telescope. It was a cheap ($15) refractor with a very unstable mount and tripod. It had to be the world's undisputed worst telescope. But with it I eagerly searched out the planets from Venus to Saturn, scanning their tiny-dot images hoping to see some sign of intelligent life. The solar system of my youth was a wondrous, charming, mysterious place.

How different today's solar system seems. Digitized, sanitized, and colorized images of every planet from Mercury to Pluto. Close-up, "in your face," photos of the land surfaces on the solid planets and gas clouds on the gas planets. There's a virtual fleet of spacecraft with telescopes and instruments probing and scanning their way through the solar system and beyond. The result: The Martians imagined by H.G. Wells (War of the Worlds) and Ray Bradbury (Martian Chronicles) don't exist. But just because we know what the planets look like doesn't mean we should stop looking at them. Observing most of the planets with your own eyes is easy. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all easily accessible to most people. Mercury will be the toughest one to observe. Do you know why? Refer to the links under the heading: "OBSERVING THE NIGHT SKY," above to help you find the planets on any given night.

My photo of the waning crescent Moon and Mercury taken before dawn on October 15, 1982. The entire photo was published on the inside front cover of the February 1983 issue of ASTRONOMY Magazine. The sky is noticeably orange because of the abundance of volcanic ash and sulfuric acid in the atmosphere during an eruption of El Chichon in Mexico that year.

With the aid of the Internet it is now easy to take a virtual tour of the solar system. Enjoy the following links:

Comet Bradfield (1981), a photograph I took looking west shortly after sunset in January of 1981.

This is Joy's Comet! My daughter, Joy was born when this comet became easily visible in the eastern sky before dawn in the spring of 1976. It's real name is Comet West (named after the person that discovered it). This is a view of Joy's Comet taken through her Dad's telescope. The comet was indeed a JOY to all amateur astronomers/stargazers. This photo was taken at 5:45 a.m., March 7, 1976, using a 6" reflector and 25 mm eyepiece, with a 5 second exposure on H.S. Ektachrome 400 iso.

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© Copyright 1995-2007 - Jack Troeger. All rights reserved.
by jtroeger@cnde.iastate.edu