5 Beautiful Stellar Objects you can see from the City Skies

In recent times, human civilization has reached new heights in terms of urbanization. The invention of electricity and light bulbs has been a stepping stone in the development of modern cities. Though humans have made remarkable progress in modernizing cities, one of the cons to it is the light pollution which has resulted in fewer dark nights leading to a humongous reduction of visible astronomical objects in the night sky.

But, there are still few objects which outshine the brightness of city lights and are visible in urban skies too. Let’s look at a few objects which you can still see from city skies:

1. Moon

Moon being one of the closest and brightest astronomical objects in the night sky is clearly visible despite the light pollution in the cities. The only satellite of Earth has hundreds of impact craters of different sizes which are created by meteor impacts due to the absence of atmosphere. A standard telescope can be useful to see the craters of the moon very clearly.

2. Planets

We already know that the solar system has 8 planets including Earth. But how many of them are visible to the naked eye in a light-polluted sky? There are 4 planets namely Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn which can be seen in the city skies. Venus and Mars are visible because they are neighboring planets to the earth.

Venus appears very bright in the evening and morning sky and also shows phases whereas Mars appears as a small pale red colored planet in the night sky. Jupiter and Saturn are visible in the city skies due to their large size. A standard telescope can spot the 4 big moons of Jupiter and can also spot the Saturn rings along with its largest moon Titan.

3. Double Stars

Double stars can overcome the light pollution from the city and are visible in the night sky. Examples of double stars are Sirius, Albireo, Rigel, etc. 

 4. Variable Stars

A star whose brightness changes is called a variable star. Variable stars are also one of those objects which can overcome the urban lights and can be seen in the night skies. Their intensity can vary from one-thousandth to 20 times of the magnitude but viewing variable stars requires a bit more patience due to their varying brightness.

5. Deep-sky- objects

Deep-sky objects majorly globular and open clusters can be seen in city skies when they are near the zenith because large numbers of stars are concentrated in a small area which results in the high intensity of light in a small area which can overcome the effect of night skies.

Some examples of such deep-sky objects are the Pleiades in Taurus, M6 in Scorpius, the Hercules Cluster (M13), etc. Some of the bright planetary nebulas like Orion Nebula, Ring Nebula (M57) in Lyra, Dumbbell Nebula (M27) in Vulpecula can also be seen through a standard telescope.