#141. Stars vs Satellites vs Planets
On my way home tonight, I started looking up at the starry sky. The only problem was, I couldn’t tell the difference between stars, satellites, and planets. With me being as curious as I am, I scoured the internet to find how to tell the difference between stars, satellites, and planets when viewing them from Earth.
So here’s what I’ve learned so far:
The visible planets are within our Solar System. They have no light of their own, but they reflect off the Sun’s light. You can see Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn with the naked eye.
Stars emit their own light. They are much, much farther than planets, so their light isn’t as strong as the light we see the planets. The light from the stars is not strong from our perspective. Because of this, the atmosphere scatters the light, which creates the twinkle that you see.
You don’t always see stars twinkling. The stars go relatively unchanged, they will only rise and set a few minutes earlier each night. Planets on the other hand, move around with respect to the background stars. Their name actually comes from their ever-moving nature. The greek word “planete” in Greek means wanderer, which speaks to the fact that the planets wander around the skyline throughout the year. The easiest way to differentiate stars and planets are the fact that planets are bigger and brighter from our perspective.
Satellites can only be seen for a short amount of time; they can be seen after sunset and before sunrise. They are very close to us(relative to the difference of planets and stars. Satellites reflect the sun’s light. They are very small, comparatively, even though they look round the same size as stars to us. This is because of the vast difference in distance. The stars are billions upon billions of miles away from us, while satellites are within 700 miles of us. They move very fast and are as bright as a medium-sized star. If the light blinks regularly, especially at a time when you can’t see satellites, it’s probably an airplane.
