• Question: Why dont we see planets move in a telescope?

    Asked by zaraa to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie, Vee on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      You CAN see them move in a telescope, but it takes a while and you probably haven’t looked for long enough. It was by noticing that the planets were moving, that Galileo realised that the earth (and the other planets) were moving around the sun. Up until then people thought that the earth was the centre of the universe.

    • Photo: Vee Mitchell

      Vee Mitchell answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      If you took a picture of a planet through your telescope then went back half and hour later and took another in exactly the same spot, the perhaps you would see the planet in a different position. You can’t always “see” the movement as it’s so small on the scale you are looking at.

    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      They are doing very very slowly, this if it takes out planet a day to spin once, other planets take a lot longer and therefore you cannot perceptively note their movements.

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