Monday,  December 03, 2012 • Vol. 13--No. 138 • 18 of 34 •  Other Editions

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of Venus and Jupiter above the pyramids of Giza. So why did the perpetrators of the photoshopped images above choose Mercury-Venus-Saturn instead to portray, instead of Venus and Jupiter? Not sure. Venus and Jupiter were much more spectacular than Mercury-Venus-Saturn will be!
• Why do these planets appear in a line in the predawn sky right now? The planets in our solar system all orbit the sun in a nearly flat plane. So - whenever we see planets near each other in our sky - they always appear in a graceful line across

Here's the real thing. Mercury, Venus and Saturn as seen December 2, 2012 over Oslofjord, an inlet in southeast Norway, by EarthSky Facebook friend Jann Peter Normann. Thank you, Jann Peter! We know you can see Venus. Look closely for Mercury (lower left) and Saturn (upper right). View larger.

our sky. This line across our sky is the same one traveled by the sun in the course of a day. It's the same path traveled by the moon. Why? Because most objects in our solar system orbit in this flat plane of the solar system. Of course, this pathway across our sky has a special name. It's called the ecliptic. Read more about the ecliptic here.
• These widely circulating images of Mercury, Venus and Saturn above the Egyptian pyramids reminds us of the false image of India at the 2012 Diwali festival. People love to take real events or images and manufacture something exaggerated from them. Why? We don't know.
• The good news for skywatchers is that Saturn and Venus are now making it easy for us to find Mercury, which, as the innermost planet of the solar system, moves from place to place in the sky so often that you might be likely to miss it. To see these planets, find an unobstructed eastern horizon and get up about 90 minutes

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