• You can see five visible planets in early July 2012. By visible planet, we are talking about any planet that can be seen by the eyes alone and that has been known to our ancestors since time immemorial. In their outward order form the sun, the five visible planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Mercury and Venus go around the sun inside of Earth's orbit, while Mars, Jupiter and Saturn circle the sun outside of Earth's orbit. You can see them all - tonight!
• Three of the five visible planets - Mercury, Mars and Saturn - pop out into the western part of the sky as dusk ebbs into darkness. The other two - Jupiter and Venus - beam in the east

during the wee hours before sunrise.
• Here's how to locate the evening planets. They are Mercury, Mars and Saturn. Look in the west, around 45 to an hour minutes after sunset. You need to look that early, or you'll miss Mercury, which sets soon after the sun. Mercury, the innermost planet, sets about 90 minutes after the sun at mid-northern latitudes.
• So Mercury is closest to the sunset point. Mars is next highest in the sky. Saturn is higher up than Mars. This line-up hold true across Earth, in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Our featured chart at top of this post shows the ecliptic - the path of the sun across our sky. Because Earth and all the other planets orbit in or near the ecliptic plane, they follow this path across our sky. So you'll be looking along the sun's path to find the planets.

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