How can I tell planets, glaxies, and stars apart? Is it possible to see a black hole with the naked eye?

Answer 1

1. Planets reflect light only and will appear as a steady light. Stars have a twinkling look to them.

2. Although you may be looking right at a black hole, you could not see it as by the laws of known physics, light cannot escape it. Therefore its name, black hole. A method of detecting a black hole is to see the effects of its gravity on neighboring stars. They appear to be orbiting something that's not there.

Over simplified answer, but I think you can get the gist.

Answer 2

Planets orbit around stars. They shine by reflected light. Unless there's a lot of water or ice in the upper atmosphere, planets usually don't "twinkle" ... stars are "point sources" and their light is easily diffused, so they "twinkle" when their light passes through our atmosphere.

Stars are the bright objects that make up Galaxies.

When viewing the night sky with your naked eye, you'd have a hard time telling the difference between planets and stars... except most planets that you can see resemble Bright stars in the night sky... and, if you watch them over a long period of time, they'll move against the background of steady stars. Real stars won't appear to move... at least not to the naked eye and not without using some expensive equipment :)

Since we live within the Milky Way Galaxy, you can't see the typical spiral pattern of our galaxy but, if you use a good telescope you can see the Andromeda Galaxy (it looks a lot like our galaxy, if we could see it from the outside :))

Other galaxies have other shapes...The Clouds of Magellan are two neighboring galaxies easily visible in the southern hemisphere on a dark/clear night.

You can't really see a black hole... but, if you had the equipment, you could see the radiation (light included :)) caused by the matter being ripped apart as is falls into the event horizon.

Answer 3

With planets, the newspapers in large cities have info as to when they appear. Venus is much brighter than anything else in the sky in the way of stars, galaxies and other planets. Planets lie in the ecliptic, which appears as a line in the sky emenating from either the setting sun or rising sun. The planets don't twinkle. Galaxies are hard to tell apart from stars, but generally, they are not bright. I think Andromeda nebula is about 3d magnitude of brightness, which about as bright as they get. Black holes can't be seen with the naked eye; that is one reason they ARE called black holes.

Answer 4

Yep, planets light tends to be more stable in the atmosphere than stars because they are relatively close and present a larger point of light, which is less affected by atmospheric disturbances.

Stars are so far away, they present a no size point of light, which is severally affected by atmospheric turbulence. That is why stars twinkle. However, even planets will twinkle if there is lots of turbulence going on, especially in summer and especially when closer to the horizon where their light passes through more atmosphere to reach our eyes.

Galaxies - you can only see one with the naked eye (in Northern Hemisphere), and you need a really dark place to be able to see it. Andromeda Galaxy then looks just like hazy little patch - nothing like a planet or a star.

In the Southern Hemisphere, we can see two smaller, but much closer, Galaxies, and they just look like small clouds.

Remember that galaxies are collections of billions of stars, and are so far away that the stars cannot be seen individually. Therefore you see them just as a faint, misty cloud.

Answer 5

I don't know if you mean how they appear or what the difference between them is so I'll try to cover both.

Well, stars are seen as points of light, as they are basically a single mass that generates it's own light by means of a nuclear fusion reaction in it's core.*

*To anyone who wants to be annoying about this later, yes there are different ones such as in the case of neutron stars. I just wanted to give the general gist.

Galaxies are systems of many bodies. That is galaxies are made of many stars, interstellar gas, dust, and/or etc. all orbiting around a common mass.

Planets are singular masses but unlike stars they do not create their own light. This is why it is practically impossible to directly view very planets with great detail. They are usually only identified if they are orbiting around a star, so that it can be seen when it passes in front, as shown here. (artistic rendition) http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/2006-0927planet.jpg

Not a chance. You'll need a pretty good telescope. Even then you won't see a black hole. With black holes the gravitational pull is so great that it doesn't even let light escape, so any "seeing" of it is impossible. With a good scope, you'd be able to see the effects of a black hole, which is how they are found and identified. Basically, if there is a massive star that is rapidly orbiting an area where there appears to be nothing. that's a black hole, sucking the poor star into itself, as shown here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Accretion_disk.jpg

we don't see the black hole but we definitely see the massive star being sucked into what appears to be nothingness.

Hope this helped. Cheers.

Answer 6

Planets tend to have a constant light while stars tend to twinkle. Galaxies wouls appear to be just like stars. And there is no way to 'see' a black hole. At least not with your naked eye.

Answer 7

Stars blink; planets don't blink when seen from earth.

And no you can't see a black hole with the naked eye, not even with a telescope, that's why they are called black holes.

Answer 8

no yet right here is a few information some black hollow the swifter you bypass the slower time is going as quickly as u attain the fee of sunshine time stops. which ability after u attain the form horizon of a black hollow u can not bypass interior the black hollow. U will die formerly u even attain that ingredient on jupiter the gravity is so stable it crushes ur bones think of the gravity of a black hollow u gets destroyed enormously rapid. additionally while ur stepping into a depressing hollow u start up turning crimson additionally u start up stretching and u won't bypass strait in u will swirl attempt this take a cup of coffee and swirl it with a spoon then a positioned a bean in it those the bean swirl this is how u bypass in a black

Answer 9

when u look up at the stars and u see sum blinking, it means there galaxies. and the none blinking is planets

blinking=galaxies
non-blinking=planets