Want to Catch a Glimpse of Mercury? Here's How!

Skywatchers are in for a real treat this October.

Named after the Roman "messenger of the gods," Mercury will be gracing the night skies this October, according to a report by UPI. The same report furthers that the planet will be getting brighter towards the end of October and will be visible in the "pre-dawn eastern sky" for the next few weeks or so, according to The Space Reporter. Mercury will be the brightest star in the sky in October 30, as reported by UPI.

Located 36 million miles from the Sun, the planet Mercury rotates at a speed of 30 miles per second and undergoes a complete revolution in 88 days. Dubbed as "elusive" by most Space reports, the "innermost planet" is often difficult to locate in the night sky because its closeness to the Sun makes it appear "low" thus, observers cannot get a view of it unobstructed.

Planets Mars, Jupiter, and Venus have been diagonally lining up Northern Hemisphere's morning sky, as per UPI, with Mercury as the newest addition. Space.com reports that the planets are positioned from lower left to upper right and worth noting is that fact that they change their places every morning.

Joe Rao elaborates in a report on Space.com: "In fact, in the coming days Jupiter seems intent on having separate meetings with two his companions. Come the morning of Friday, Oct. 17, Jupiter and Mars will be separated by less than 0.5 degrees (that's smaller than the apparent width of the moon)." Rao furthers: "Between Oct. 22 and Oct. 29, we'll have a "summit meeting" of the three planets ... defined as a "trio" when they're within 5 degrees of each other. They'll be closest together on the Oct. 26, the very same morning where Jupiter has a close encounter with Venus; the pair forming a dazzling "double planet."

Rao suggests, as per Space.com, to set the alarm clock before the sun rises. He instructs for interested skygazers to "look well below and to the left" of the three morning planets and "above the eastern horizon" 30 to 45 minutes before sunrise. The "bright yellowish-orange star" is Mercury.

Moreover, Rao describes Mercury to be similar to Venus and like the moon, goes through phases. Therefore while it will begin to turn back toward the sun after Oct. 16, it will continue to brighten until the end of the month. By Oct. 30, Rao of Space.com reports that the red planet will have brightened to magnitude -1.0. It will appear the brightest star in the sky  apart from Sirius (the brightest of all stars).  Oct. 30 marks the day Mercury will appear side-by-side with Spica, a bluish first magnitude star found in Virgo.