There\u2019s a short window before sunrise when the sky feels undecided.<\/p>\n
Not quite night, not yet day.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re up early enough this week, it\u2019s worth stepping outside for a look.<\/p>\n
Low in the eastern sky, three planets are gathered in the dawn light: Mercury, Mars and Saturn.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not in a neat line, and you won\u2019t mistake them for anything dramatic, but they sit close enough together to catch the eye. If you have binoculars or a small telescope, there\u2019s a fourth \u2014 Neptune \u2014 though you\u2019ll need to know exactly where to look.<\/p>\n
They lie near the border between Pisces and Cetus.<\/p>\n
Pisces is part of the zodiac, familiar enough, usually imagined as two fish tied together \u2014 an old Greek story about escape and survival. Cetus is less well behaved.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the sea monster sent to eat Andromeda and it never quite made it into the tidy band of zodiac constellations. Saturn has wandered into it this week, which feels like the sort of thing Saturn would do. Take that, astrologers.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always liked Cetus.<\/p>\n
On a clear morning it does resemble a whale lifting its head above the horizon. Tau Ceti sits where an eye might be and Diphda marks the forehead. It\u2019s not precise, but then the sky rarely is.<\/p>\n
Of the three planets, Mercury is the brightest, highest and a little washed by the coming daylight, with a faint pinkish tone.<\/p>\n
Saturn is below and to the right, a soft yellow.<\/p>\n
Mars which completes the celestial triangle, is faintest at the moment, its usual rusty colour more subdued.<\/p>\n
They only appear close together. Mercury is the nearest of the three, Mars about twice as far away and Saturn much further still \u2014 close to ten times Mercury\u2019s distance.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a small bonus.<\/p>\n
Just below the star Algenib in Pegasus and very low in the sky, the comet C\/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) is beginning to creep into view. It\u2019s been putting on a decent show in the northern hemisphere and over the next week or so it may become easier to pick up from here.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll need a clear horizon and probably binoculars, but it\u2019s certainly worth a look.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a simple thing, really, a few points of light before breakfast, but worth the effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a short window before sunrise when the sky feels undecided. Not quite night, not yet day. If…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-385241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}