(Posted 7 October 2018) Step outside tonight as the sky darkens to spot four planets without a telescope.
Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will all be visible to the unaided eye with each looking like a slightly different coloured star.
Tonight is unusual from a sky watching point of view, because the asteroid/minor planet Vesta will be relatively close to a bright star in the constellation Sagittarius. This means if you have access to a decent sized pair of binoculars, you will be able to use that star to spot Vesta.
Once you have located Saturn and the ‘Teapot’ of Sagittarius, grab your binoculars and point it at the star that makes up the teapot’s ‘lid’.
The asteroid Vesta will be the faint ‘star’ located in the position marked on the finder chart. To confirm you are looking at the correct ‘star’, you can do what professional astronomers do and look again in a few days time. Vesta will be the ‘star’ that has moved relative to the other stars.