I have seen Venus and Mars plenty of times, but I am not sure where to look for the others like Jupiter & Saturn. Anyone know where?
They don't stay in the same place, that's why they're called planets (wandering stars). So you can't say exactly where to look. They'll always be somewhere near a band of sky which is roughly where the sun passes, because the planets are all orbiting the sun roughly in the same plane. You can do some simple deductions from the geometry, for example Jupiter can be overhead at midnight, but Venus can never be (because it's nearer the sun than we are); and the full moon always rises at sunset (because when it's full it's on the side of the earth opposite to the sun). Jupiter is often about the same brightness and colour as Venus so if the position doesn't make it obvious they can easily be confused. Usually if you take a peek at Jupiter with a reasonable pair of binoculars you'll be able to see some of its four brightest moons, which is a good way to know it isn't Venus. They're stunning on a clear night with even modest binoculars, especially if you see all four in a row. As I write (mid-April 2010) Jupiter is in the morning sky and Venus is in the evening sky so they're hard to mistake. Apart from the sun and the moon they're the brightest things in the sky.
There are lots of almanacs that tell you the positions of the brightest planets used in navigation and you can find that kind of thing easily on the Web. It helps to get to know a few of the brightest stars and the major constellations, then you can use them as a reference. You only need a few. In the northern hemisphere start with the stars Polaris (not a bright star but its position is important), Vega, Capella, Sirius, Aldebaran, Procyon, Altair, Deneb, Arcturus (all bright) and then the constellations Ursa Major and Minor, Cassiopeia, Orion, Leo, Cygnus and (not really a constellation) the summer triangle which is made up of three stars you already know by now. All stars except the sun pass over the same point on the earth each day - well, about every 23 hours 56 minutes - so if you bolt a telescope to the wall you'll only ever see the same stars pass by in procession and if you see a planet you'll be lucky. Don't point it where the sun goes.
For stargazing 'events' I find it's easiest to use sites like
http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/search/label/weekly sky
http://www.astronomynow.com/sky_chart.shtml
as they've done all the work for you already and they'll give you a few days warning of what's coming. Then it's over to the Met. Office site...
Stuff like this has fascinated me since I was a kid. I wanted to make a telescope until a friend at school told me he spent the entire six-week holiday grinding the mirror for his. Nowadays if you want a picture of Saturn as big as the living room window you can just download one in five minutes from the Internet so I suppose for me that takes some of the specialness away. But some of the pictures from the really big telescopes are just awesome.
