The best way to recognize the planets with certainty is to look up their positions with the aid of the _American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac_, published annually by the Government at Washington. There the right ascensions and declinations of all the planets are given for any time of the year. Having these, you may find on the large-scale charts the approximate place of the planet sought, and, if you choose, indicate its position with a pencil-mark. The study of the planets, even without telescopic aid, has a charm hardly less potent than that of the stars. Mercury is fascinating because of the difficulty of seeing him in the light of twilight or dawn. The ancients were greatly puzzled by his dodges, and some of them thought that he was a double personality, and gave him two names, one for his morning and the other for his evening apparitions. With the Egyptians he was respectively Set and Horus, and with the Greeks Apollo and Hermes. The same was true of Venus, who was Phosphorus in the morning and Hesperus in the evening. Venus, after she passes the half-moon phase, becomes so bright that she simply overpowers all stars in her neighborhood. Her splendor seems almost supernatural, and she has frequently been seen at high noon, a point of intense light burning in the blue sky. Jupiter’s entrance into any constellation immediately alters its familiar aspect, and he becomes its unquestioned leader, and remains such until his slow eastward motion carries him on to reign in another quarter of the firmament. He is never more impressive than when, in consequence of the annual revolution of the heavens, he rises late some night and takes the lingering star-gazer by surprise. Then all the stellar hosts that for hours have held the watcher spellbound cease their incantation in the presence of this great counter-charmer, to whose power they, too, seem to bow. Although Venus at her brightest outshines Jupiter, she lacks a certain majesty which he alone possesses. His light is calm, steady, insistent, commanding. He does not look like a star, but rather a _superstar_. If he beams at all, it is not the hurried scintillation of the twinkling multitude around him. Rising through a moisture-laden and wind-swept sky, where the stars are like pulsating atoms, shaken apart and scattered in tinsel showers of rainbow sparks, he glows unflickering, recognizing the aerial tumult only by a deepening of color which makes him the more imposing. As he mounts the heights of the sky he gleams ever brighter and ever steadier, and, casting off the tarnish of the horizon, his supereminent light glows with a splendor that is amazing. If you have an eye that can detect one or two of Jupiter’s moons hiding close in his rays, you may boast of your powers of vision, for that feat has been accomplished by very few human beings. Humboldt heard of a German “master tailor” who could do it. There are a few other cases on record. Most persons