Four morning planets

I woke up at 6.30am this morning. Not that I wanted to go observe the morning but because I needed to go marketing early. But out of habit, the first thing I did was to get out of the house with the camera. Just testing my luck to see whether I could catch the so-called morning stars without the dawn getting too bright or the neighbourhood houses blocking my view. Turned out that I was lucky enough. And so, here is a view from between two houses, of the four planets in a row: Saturn at the top, followed by Mars, then Venus and finally, Jupiter at the bottom. They are positioned in a roughly straight line along the so-called ecliptic plane.

Over the past fortnight or so, Jupiter had been crawling upwards slowly from the horizon in the east but it had not been sufficiently high enough in the sky from the point of view in my neighbourhood. Today is the first time I'm seeing it although I've friends staying in highrise condominiums on the island saying that they could already see this planet.

From now onwards until the end of the month, Jupiter will be rising higher with each passing day. At the same time, Venus will be sinking slowly towards the horizon. They will meet eventually and then slowly pull apart in opposite directions. On the morning of the first of May, the two planets will be closest together as they pass by one another. As they are the brightest objects in the sky, their combined brilliance will surely be a sight to behold. I can't wait but I hope the sky will be clear enough without clouds to hide them then.