Planets
While stars are in fact distant suns, planets are smaller and cooler bodies that orbit our own sun. They shine by reflected sunlight. The planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are usually brighter than the brightest stars in the sky. Because of their orbital motion, they slowly move with respect to the 'fixed' stars.



2 comments
Cool! Very interesting!
There is a very bright "star" in the Southeastern US sky right now, I believe it is almost due South and many times brighter than other objects, can anyone tell me what it is?