Week of Oct. 20-26, 2019

Last week, we checked out the brightest object in the nighttime sky — the moon — which is about as easy as it gets. This week, my challenge to you is much tougher: finding the seventh planet of our solar system.

Just how many planets orbit our sun? Well, when I was in school, we knew of nine, but today — with Pluto having been reclassified as a dwarf planet — the official number is eight.

But back in the good ol' days — about 239 years ago, for example, when life was simpler — every astronomer and schoolchild knew the answer. There were six planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, five of which people could see wandering the starry heavens over time. And that's all that ever was known since the dawn of time.

That's why, in 1781, the world was stunned when musical composer and amateur astronomer William Herschel announced his discovery of a seventh planet. Astronomers named it Uranus, after Ouranos, the ancient Greek god of the sky.

Uranus is easily the most mispronounced planetary name in the English language. You may, of course, say it any way you'd like, but the proper pronunciation is YOU-rah-nus.

What's surprising about Uranus is that it wasn't found much earlier for, you see, the planet can sometimes be spotted with the naked eye. In fact, right now is one of those times, and if you've never seen our seventh planet, this is a great time to begin your search.

Uranus reaches its opposition — the point in its orbit where it lies closest to Earth — on Monday, Oct. 28, and for the following week or so, it will rise in the east not long after sunset.

Finding Uranus takes some patience, but it's not too tough. First, locate the faint double string of stars known as Pisces, the fishes, low in the east. Then find the bottom star, Alrescha, and the star Hamal to its upper left, and aim binoculars nearly midway between them.

Here you may be able to spot Uranus as a point of light; through a small telescope, the planet appears as a distinct, though still tiny, blue-green disk.

Once you know exactly which dot of light is Uranus and can identify the stars around it, try searching for it with your eyes alone. If you have excellent vision and a clear, very dark rural sky far from city light pollution, you may be surprised by how easy this is!

Now, if Uranus can occasionally be seen with the unaided eye, why hadn't the ancients noted it? And if they had, how might that have changed history?

After all, the five visible planets (plus the sun and moon) lent importance to the number seven, and we see it everywhere: There are seven days of the week, seven rungs of perfection, seven gates of Thebes, seven wonders and on and on.

So, it's only natural to wonder how things might be different had there been eight — instead of seven — significant bodies that traveled the heavens. It's only by chance that there aren't.

Just a little something to ponder as you gaze skyward this week!

Visit Dennis Mammana at facebook.com/DennisMammana. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.