How can you tell what they are? Looks just like points of light.
The stars appear to us in a pattern, that we’ve organized into constellations*. Familiar names like Orion, or Aquarius. Though the patterns appear to transverse the sky as the Earth rotates, they remain (relatively) fixed in relation to each other. Stars are incredibly far away, and move so slowly that they appear static to us. Over a period of several thousand years, changes can be seen, but for us, in our lifetimes, they’re fixed.
The planets exist in our solar system. They orbit the sun, just as Earth does, so their orbital motion is visible to us as gradual changes in position against the background of the far more distant stars.
If you know the constellations, you know the background, against which there are wandering points of light - planets, from the Greek word for wanderer - which move across the background pattern of constellations.
A planet is easy to see, because it’s bright, and it’s in a place, against the background, where there wasn’t anything bright a month or two ago.
But you have to know what the background looks like. And you have to look up at the sky to notice the changes.
*Constellations were named and identified in the early days of civilization - mostly after mythological figures, and knowing the stars helped ancient peoples define the calendar. There are 13 Constellations in the Zodiac, in the plane of rotation of the Earth, and for roughly each month of the year, a different constellation is seen in the East, just before the sun rises.
Aquarius, for example, the bringer of water, was associated with rainy season. The “dog days of summer” were named because they were hot, and you knew those days were here because Sirius, the dog of Orion, is a very bright star, easily seen, was just starting to rise in the East, right before sunrise. That event also corresponded with the seasonal flooding of the Nile.
My personal favorite - Orion - when seen in the East in the evening, means it’s fall.
Astrologers co-opted the constellations to and their positions to be able to predict the future and other gobbledygook. Ancient names and real objects, but applied to jumbo-jumbo and hogwash.
Ancient Astronomers were very valuable as they kept the calendar, knowing when it was time to plant, time to harvest, when the rainy season would begin.
Thanks for the pictures.
