This is a great month for finding planets. All five planets we can see (in dark skies) without help from binoculars or a telescope can be found fairly easily this month. Some just after sunset, some a bit before sunrise. Best yet, the weather is predicting clear skies every night this coming week! Okay, so how do we find each planet? You can read the link for a really good article with clear diagrams from EarthSky.

Planets you can find after sunset:

Venus:  Venus will be one of the first objects you'll see in the sky at night this month, and it will be visible as a bright white light low in the sky to the west. You will see it near, behind, and a bit above the path of the setting sun. If you think of Venus as chasing the sun into the sunset, it should be easy to find. Venus will be the brightest light in the sky once the sun is fully behind the mountains upriver.

Mercury: Mercury is much harder to spot than Venus, but this is a particularly excellent month to try. This weekend in fact, it should be a dim light in the sky close to Venus, slightly ahead of and below Venus, towards the setting sun. Because it's much dimmer than Venus, your best chance to see it with your own eyes will be about one hour after sunset. Those of you who wear glasses sometimes will need them to see Mercury (and it'll help to clean them as well as you can first). It will also help to find the darkest spot around your yard that you can. If you don't spot it right away, keep trying this week, because on the 21st of May (next Thursday), Mercury will get closer and closer to Venus until they pass almost side by side. The later in the month, Mercury will gradually take position behind Venus. On May 23rd, the thinnest sliver of New Moon will be directly below Mercury and very near Venus.

The diagrams in the article will make all of this clearer.

Planets you can find before sunrise: (5am or so)

The Moon:  "Wait a minute, that's not a planet, what's Mr. Maillet talking about?" Yes, I know, but the moon will be obvious in the sky, and this month, it's going to be a big help in finding Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. This weekend, (May 15th), the Moon will be in formation with Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter, all at the same time. To see this best, you'll need to be up in the early morning. 5am if you can manage it. (Yes, I know, but it won't hurt you to be up early this once. :) )

Mars: If you can visualize in your mind the path the sun takes during the day, and the path the moon is taking tonight, you can find Mars as a middlingly bright object with a reddish twinkle just above and to the right of the moon. it (and the other planets) will be ahead of the Moon in its orbit from the morning of the 15th, onward. There's a good diagram in the article that will make this clearer.

Jupiter: Jupiter will be well ahead of Mars and the Moon along the same path. Jupiter is also reasonably easy to find. You're going to see Jupiter as a light that's brighter than Mars, whiter than Mars, but it will also have a particular twinkle that'll look red at times. It will twinkle a bit more vividly than nearby stars will. If you can find Jupiter, and look at it through binoculars, you will see up to four dim lights in a straight line across Jupiter. Something like  . o . . .    If you can spot that, then congratulations, you have just seen four of Jupiter's largest moons.

Saturn: Saturn will be just behind Jupiter along the same path for the whole of this month. It will appear like a middlingly bright star and will twinkle white. You won't be able to see moons or rings without a telescope, but if you can spot it, too, you'll have spotted the five planets astronomers knew about thousands of years ago, long before telescopes were invented.

If you manage to spot any (or best yet, all five!), please email me (andre.maillet@nbed.nb.ca) to let know about it. I'd love to hear about your experiences.

How deep do creatures swim? How deep have humans explored with submarines? Come explore the deepest seas on Earth with Neal Agarwal's flash simulation.

While you're exploring that, here are links to two short videos on sea life as it exists in near ideal conditions such as the Great Barrier Reef (with thanks to National Geographic), or else in some of the most difficult sea conditions to be found on Earth, such as life huddled around hydrothermal vents poking out from the very deepest ocean floors where no sunlight light can reach. (With further thanks to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

From the Extra History collection of history videos: "She was the most ferocious pirate China had ever known. She was a powerful fleet commander, a sharp businesswoman, and a consummate strategist. She was Cheng I Sao, leader of the Pirate Confederation, and she lived her life on her terms."