Observing The Solar System Written by Shawn Funk Ever see an unusually bright “star” in the sky and wonder why you might not have noticed it before? Well, you didn’t notice it because it wasn’t there before. Wait. So, stars just appear out of nowhere? No, those aren’t stars. They are the planets in our solar system. The word “planet” is a Greek word which translates to “wandering star,” in reference to the way planets slowly move across the stellar space-scape, sometimes appearing to move in a retrograde (backward) motion (Bennet et. al., 2014). Of the eight planets, five are easily seen with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,…