Mars and Jupiter Appear 1.2 Degrees Apart in Pre-Dawn Sky Monday

Mars is high in the eastern sky, with Jupiter below it but looking brighter. The pair will also sit close to the bright star Regulus and may look like a triple star. Mars and Jupiter will look very close on both November 15 and 16.

"They will be separated by just 1.2 degrees, or roughly the width of a finger held at arm's length," said Gideon Bendavid-Walker, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

The rest of the parade

Venus is the easy one. It is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon, and it sits above and to the right of Mercury. It rises higher than Mercury and appears earlier in the hours before sunrise.

Do not confuse Venus with the nearby bright star Spica. Stars twinkle, while planets glow steadily.

Mercury is the hardest to spot. It is the closest planet to the Sun and the smallest in the solar system, so it is only visible in twilight, dim and low on the horizon. Look to the south-east with a wide, flat horizon.

With binoculars or a telescope, a few more planets come into view. Uranus will be setting in the west at a similar time before sunrise, while Saturn and Neptune are visible for a time in the evening sky rather than the morning.

Weather and what comes next

For the UK, Sunday night was forecast to be drier as the day's rain and hill snow cleared. Wintry showers were expected to bother northern Scotland with plenty of cloud, and the odd shower could pop up around north-west facing coasts. Elsewhere the night looked mostly clear and dry, apart from some mist or fog patches.

From November 24, a full Moon will join the planets in the morning sky. It is the first of a run of four supermoons.