Jupiter, Mars, and Venus will be closest together early in the morning on October 26, with Jupiter having such a close encounter with Venus, they’ll form what’s known as a “double planet” for about 3 hours.
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On Thursday, the waxing crescent moon will be just 7 percent full, allowing Saturn to steal the show. It will appear the brightest star in the sky apart from Sirius (the brightest of all stars). It is called Mercury when seen in the evening sky, and Apollo if it appears in the morning.
On October 16, Mercury will be 18-degrees to the east of the sun and will glow brightly making it the best day of the year to view the innermost planet in the early morning.
As the end of October approaches, Mercury will get brighter and brighter. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun (Earth is the third) and moves slowly, while Jupiter, the fifth planet from the sun moves, very slowly.
Mercury appears to the left of and below all three larger planets at about 20-45 minutes before sunrise and has a yellow-orange color.
This week, stargazers will have a chance to test their observing skills by locating tiny Mercury, the elusive “messenger of the gods”. For the last couple weeks, Mars, Jupiter and Venus have been congregating in the Northern Hemisphere’s morning sky. With its position so near to the sun (only 36 million miles away) and its lack of atmosphere, it receives and releases heat pretty fast and has the most extreme temperature variations in our solar system, ranging from 900 degrees F when facing the Sun and -300 degrees F when it’s facing away.
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Like the Moon and Venus, Mercury goes through a cycle of phases. By October 30, Mercury will be brighter than every other star in the sky. Mercury is the closest to the sun and is never around for long. Also on October 30, Mercury will appear side-by-side with the bluish first magnitude star Spica, in Virgo.
