Sooner or later the laws of chance force the planets into crowded, eye-catching formations, and that’s exactly what the sky has cooked up for December. Throw enough planets together and, like vegetarians at a pig roast, they’ll stand out even to the casual onlooker. Since most are bright and change position nightly, the pageant is obvious even in light-polluted cities.
The year’s earlier months gave little idea of what lay ahead. Mars peaked last March, Jupiter in August, while Venus slowly crept from behind the sun’s glare during autumn. Each world, at its own pace, has now arrived in the southwestern sky as evening dusk fades.
Last month the planets spread out in a line along the twilight horizon. Now all but one (Saturn) clump together in a 45-degree swath of sky. The rendezvous occurs in the dim constellations Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Pisces--which offer not a single bright star among ...
