The planets are the focus of tonight's Public Night. The classical world knew of 5 planets (plus the Sun and Moon) which wandered through the sky: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Tonight, if it were clear, you would have a chance to see four of these five.
Don't worry if you can't see them all tonight: these four will all be visible for another few weeks. If you look to the west soon after sunset, you should see several bright objects all in a line:
Venus is by far the brightest; use it and Saturn to find the dimmer Mars. Jupiter shines brightly in the eastern half of the sky.
Unfortunately, the skies aren't clear tonight, so we can't see the planets. As a consolation prize, we invite you to listen to a lecture on an interesting astronomical event coming up this summer: the transit of Venus on June 8, 2004. You can find the lecture on the web at this URL:
http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys235/venus_t/venus_t.html
There are several other sites with lots of information about this event:
The NEAT project searches for asteroids. As a by-product, they occasionally discover comets as well. One of their latest, Comet C/2001 Q4, will zoom through our skies in May and June. On Monday, May 17, it will be high in the northwestern sky after sunset. The Moon won't be visible tonight, so we'll be able to see faint details that might be lost in bright conditions. We'll open up at 8:00 PM and watch until 10:00 PM.
Let's hope the weather is better!