Morning Sky

graphic courtesy of earth sky.com

Ellie and I have been watching the sky all week.  This  morning we took time to go out figure out exactly what we could see!  Since it was certainly before dawn, we know these are the planets that we saw.

She was so excited to be able to see Jupiter and Venus.  Although the planets are in the same place in the sky that the above picture depicts, Jupiter was much smaller and fainter than Venus.  Which Ellie was quick to point out to me that was because Venus is much closer to Earth ... and she had me there!

And since she's a technology girl, she also used an app on my phone to validate this information.  I downloaded Night Sky which uses GSP to determine your location.  You point it at the sky and pictures appear to tell you which constellation and in our case which planet we could see.

The cool part for us was that Jupiter through the app REALLY looked like the Jupiter you learn about in school, not just a little star-blob in the sky.

Needless to say, we were very excited .... until we realize what we were going to see TOMORROW ...  MERCURY!!!

graphic courtesy of earth sky.com