Saw a Planet at 9:am on clear morning??.....

[ford001]

Hi all, I'm a newbie to this site. I came across it while looking for some info on what I'm about sure was a planet I saw this morning.<br /><br />I was watching a military jet fly over thru binoculars, and noticed through the contrail I could see something shining. As the contrail faded, I was sure I was looking at a planet. <br /><br />It was high in the southern sky from where I'm at in the NE corner of Washington State. I got my spotting scope to try and see it clearer, but had trouble finding it thru the scope.<br /><br />I looked thru my May issue of Astronomy Magazine, but couldn't find any planets that would be in that position at that time. <br /><br />I had thought to see a planet at that time of day, and at that height, it would have to have been large like Jupiter or Saturn, but they are not supposed to be there at that time.<br /><br />Any ideas on what planet it may have been?<br /><br />Also as I was searching for the planet/star thru the binocs a few minutes later, I spotted something moving across the sky at a slow pace west to east. It was shiny and headed towards the sun, so I could only follow it for a short while. A minute or so later, I had the same thing happen, and the second object moved at the same steady pace, and was in almost the same spot.<br /><br />My question with these is, could they have been satillittes, and is it common to be able to see them reflecting in the daytime? I have seen dozens of them at night, and these seemed to move in the same way.<br /><br />Thanks in adavnce for any info. I'll be out tomorrow morning again to see if I can spot the planet/star.

 

[doubletruncation]

Venus would have been high pretty high in the south. See for example: http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/skychart/article_1220_1.asp# to generate a sky chart from your location at 9:00.<br /><br />I don't know anything about seeing satellites in the daytime though - hopefully someone else will know better. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

It is possible to see planets in the daytime -- sometimes even with the naked eye, but more usually with binoculars or a telescope. Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn are the most commonly observed during daylight. Satellites are usually too dim, but there are some exceptionally bright ones. The most famous is, of course, the ISS. This sometimes outshines Venus, so if you can see Venus during the day, you can theoretically see the ISS too. You saw more than one object, so they couldn't both be the ISS. If they were similar in brightness, then the ISS was probably not one of them. Seeing two so close together suggests either very high altitude aircraft flying in formation, or satellites flying in formation. There are several satellite formations, including the A-Train, a collection of scientific satellites including the recently launched CALIPSO and CloudSat. I haven't been able to get a figure for the predicted brightness of either spacecraft, though, and most of the A-Train spacecraft are pretty small. Lacrosse satellites are a possibility; I believe these are brighter. They're military spy satellites, so information about them is of course slim. But they can be seen from the ground, and fly in formations of three. (This is presumably to allow them to collate their data with what the others in the formation can detect.)<br /><br />Venus, incidentally, is always brighter than Jupiter or Saturn. It is very reflective and is much closer to the Earth (and closer to the Sun as well, which means it receives more light in the first place). <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[ford001]

Thanks for the info. <br /><br />I went out to look this morning, but of course there were high clouds.....<br /><br />I never realized that Satellites were put in formation. That's really interesting.<br /><br />I'm going to download the sky and telescope program to see what planets are where in the sky in my area.<br /><br />Thanks again.