This Week's Night Sky: Planets Meet Up, Orionid Meteors Fly

Catch pieces of Halley's Comet streaking through the dark, along with Venus, Jupiter, and Mars in a cluster.

Individual meteor streaks can be traced back to the shower’s namesake constellation Orion, which rises in the northeast in the overnight hours. Absolute peak is expected sometime late night on the 21st into the early morning hours of the 22nd.  

On Monday, all three worlds are within five degrees of each other, meaning they can all be easily covered with an outstretched fist—and will remain this close until Halloween. There's even a chance to glimpse a fourth planet in the sky show: the elusive and faint Mercury. Keen skywatchers with a clear line of sight to the eastern horizon can look for Mercury very low in the sky, to the lower left of the rest of the planets.

The tiny blue-tinged

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