Positions will vary with each passing day.
Posted on 12/31/2017 12:21:57 PM PST by BenLurkin
As 2017 draws to a close, cloud cover permitting, three bright planets are lined up across the eastern sky before sunrise. In their order from the sunrise point upward, these worlds are surprisingly bright Mercury, dazzling Jupiter, and modesty-bright Mars.
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As Earth spins under the sky, Mercury is the last planet to rise into the morning sky, coming up just above your sunrise point as predawn darkness gives way to morning twilight. In the Northern Hemisphere, Mercury rises better than 90 minutes before the sun in late December. At temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, Mercury comes up about 70 minutes before sunrise. Although this apparition of Mercury favors the Northern Hemisphere, most everyone worldwide should be in a good position to view Mercury before sunrise for a week or so around the time 2017 ends, and 2018 begins.
Technically, all five of the so-called bright planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – reside in the morning sky right now. By bright planet, we mean any planet that can be seen without an optical aid and which has been observed by our ancestors since time immemorial.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbf.com ...
So Jupiter is “dazzling” while Mars is only “modest”?
Don’t you listen to them, Mars!
You can be as bright as you want to be!
Maybe you aren’t “dazzling”, but you’re nice!
E,W & F
One of my top 300 favorite groups.
Positions will vary with each passing day.
Isn’t that presuming a clear sky, which isn’t happening around here?
Mercury may rise 30 minutes before the sun but I sure as hell don’t. zzzzzzzzzz
Love when stuff like this happens, but Mercury is always so close to the horizon that I have no spot to view it from. No open space around here will given me line of sight. Not even sure if the beach will work.
yup, that and with a low of -5, the only thing I’ll get up for before sunrise is to pee or put a piece of wood on the fire.
“Modest Mars!?! The Supreme Council Of Mars is NOT amused! Prepare to die puny Earthlings!!
If the Global Warming people could demonstrate that they really have an understanding of the situation and make accurate predictions like these, they would have some believability.
Yeah, the East horizon has a ridge with trees making it impossible to see before too much Sun has overwhelmed the view, and when I tried for the Western view, the clouds stacked up, viewing the atmosphere stretching to the horizon, blocking the viewing the planet as well.
Cue the opening measures of Richard Strauss’, “Also Sprach Zarathustra”
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