When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Get your eyes on the seventh planet, and you can graduate as a skywatcher — and there’s a perfect way to cheat this week as Mars glides by Uranus. | Credit: Created in Canva ProI used to think Uranus was the sort of planet you graduated into. Saturn and its rings first, obviously. Jupiter and its cloud bands soon after that. Venus, if it’s shrinking to a crescent (which it soon will be), and, of course, Mars and its ice caps. But Uranus? The seventh planet feels like something reserved for people with huge telescopes, expensive eyepieces and incredibly lucky atmospheric seeing. It may be considered an ice giant planet, but it’s almost four times farther from the sun than Jupiter and twice as far as Saturn — and it’s a lot smaller than both. Uranus didn’t figure in my plans.And yet on a frosty evening in September, a few years ago, I finally got to see it as a blue-green dot nearly 1.8 billion miles away. It was through a large Dobsonian telescope belonging to one very generous member of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society, outside the visitor center at Bryce Canyon National Park, which hosts popular astronomy and night-sky programs. Uranus shone dimly, but I could easily make out its color by averting my eyes (looking slightly to the side of the planet rather than directly at it). That way, the human eye’s light-sensitive peripheral cells can catch brightness — it’s a technique that’s worth learning for all kinds of telescopic astronomy. Even then, Uranus looked like a faint, motionless star rather than a glowing planet. It was no Saturn.AdvertisementAdvertisementWhat surprised me wasn’t finally seeing Uranus — that was down to a massive telescope. It was how suddenly my perception changed once my eye locked onto it. After seeing it up close (ish), I wanted to know exactly where Uranus was in the night sky. Uranus is technically visible to the naked eye, but it is very challenging to see. It shines at 5.7 magnitude — right at the absolute limit of human visibility, but in Bryce Canyon’s dark moonless skies, it was definitely there. Was it a satisfying sight? Not especially — but I could not unsee it. That transition — from looking casually …
