How to See Stars, Satellites, and More in the Daytime Sky
It’s possible to see celestial objects during the day, but it’s not always easy
It seems pretty obvious that you can’t see any stars in the daytime.
If you were to say that to me, however, I would gently take you by the hand, lead you outside and—being an unrepentant smart aleck—silently point at the sun.
All joking aside, our nearest star is the reason we don’t see other stars during the day—well, part of the reason, the other being our atmosphere. Molecules in the air act like pinball bumpers, scattering solar photons in all directions. Because you’re surrounded by these molecules, you see sunlight coming at you from every direction in the sky. Earth’s air preferentially scatters bluer photons, so the sky appears blue.
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And it’s also bright. Stars are pretty faint, so all that scattered light drowns them out. There’s just too much contrast; it’s like trying to hear a whisper at a heavy metal concert.
Scientifically speaking, though, being able to observe stars while the sun is up would be a great boon to astronomers. Some stars undergo rapid changes as they begin to die. For example, in 2019 and 2020 the red supergiant star Betelgeuse blasted out immense volumes of dust that dropped its visibility by more than half and had astronomers scrambling to understand the physical processes behind the event. But for months at a time Betelgeuse was effectively invisible, too close to the sun in the sky to be seen through the glare, and astronomers lost lots of valuable observing time. Many other celestial phenomena are similarly time-critical, which is why some astronomers have worked quite hard to find ways around…
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