Look up between Oct. 24 and Oct. 29 to see the planetary trio, which is formed when three planets come within 5 degrees of each other.
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This week, stargazers will have a chance to test their observing skills by locating tiny Mercury, the elusive “messenger of the gods”.
Oh, and if four planets isn’t wonderful enough for you, here’s another tip: For hardcore sky-gazers, Saturn will also appear in the evening twilight, with Space.com reporting that on October 16, Saturn “crosses over into the boundaries of Scorpius, having spent the late spring, summer and early fall in Libra”.
You don’t get this kind of show for free though – over the next three weeks, the best time to view Mercury will be at around 5:45am (ET), with Jupiter, Mars, and Venus expected to switch up their positions relative to each other every morning.
Toward the end of October, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars will converge and form a broad triangle in the eastern pre-dawn sky.
Both Mercury and Venus are referred to as “inferior planets” because they orbit closer to the Sun than the Earth does.
Mercury faces the greatest range of temperatures, almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit on its day side and minus 300 F on its night side.
“They’ll be eye-catching”, DeBruyn said.
And as an added bonus, be sure to be outside early on Sunday, October 11, no less than a half-hour before local sunrise.
The planet Mercury is going to be visible here on earth in the month of October, and it’s going to be magnificent.
Mercury, like Venus, appears to go through phases like the moon. And if you miss that one, on October 30, Mercury will be brighter than any star in the sky, except the brightest of them all, Sirius.
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“Mercury will appear side-by-side with the bluish first magnitude star Spica, in Virgo”. Spica, however, will be only appear about 1one-sixth as bright as Mercury, so you’ll probably need binoculars to spot it.
