There's a bit of a traffic jam in the eastern dawn sky over the
next few days. Four of the five planets that are visible to the
unaided eye are packed together within a few degrees of each
other. In fact, you could easily cover up the whole bunch of
them with the palm of your hand held at arm's length.
Unfortunately, though, only one of the four is easy to pick out.
The others are much tougher to find -- especially from the
northern half of the country, where the planets rise at a
shallower angle. The easy one is Venus, the "morning star."
Tomorrow, it's to the right of the Moon about 40 minutes or so
before sunrise. The other three planets trickle off to the lower
left of Venus. Mercury is the closest to Venus. It looks like a
fairly bright star, but you may need binoculars to see it. And a
little farther to the lower right are Jupiter and Mars, standing
almost side by side. Jupiter is the brighter of the two, but
you'll need help to find both planets. This configuration will
change day by day. On May 10th,