It's been awhile since we've had five fellow planets in our solar system visible to the naked eye. Four of the five are arranged in two pairs and one of them is a lone wolf, and all are available in the early evening. Three out of the five planets are easy to see, but two of them are toughies. Hey, stargazing challenges can be a lot of fun.

Let's start with the lone wolf. That's Jupiter, which has occupied our Butler evening skies for many months now. The largest planet in our solar system, with a girth stretching over 88,000 miles compared to our Earth's 8,000-mile diameter, is shining brightly in the low western sky after dark. It's the brightest starlike object in the evening heavens.

In fact, this weekend the first quarter moon is a little to the left of Jupiter. As I've told you many times you can resolve the disk of the great planet, now 549 million miles away, even with a small telescope. You can also see up to four of Jupiter's largest orbiting moons that resemble tiny stars on both sides of the big guy.

A little above Jupiter is the fairly bright constellation, Leo the Lion. The lower right side resembles a rightward leaning backward question mark. Without an overdose of imagination you can see how that query symbol outlines the profile of the chest and head of the heavenly beast.

The easiest pair of planets to see are Mars and Saturn, ready for your enjoyment as soon as darkness sets in.

In fact, Mars is still nearly as close to Earth as it's been since 2005. Right now it's about 57 million miles away. Shortly after evening twilight a distinctly bright and red “star” will pop out in the low southern sky. That's it. That's Mars.

The only other brighter starlike object in the sky right now is Jupiter. A little deeper into evening twilight another bright star pops out just to the lower left of Mars. It's the next brightest object in that part of the sky. It's just 17 degrees or about 1½ fist-widths at arms length to the left of Mars.

Mars and Saturn are nuzzled up with another bright star that actually is a star. It's Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. It's more than 3,400 trillion miles away and also has a distinctive reddish glow. In fact, the name comes from a Greek phrase meaning “rival of Mars.”

Later this week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings, the waxing gibbous “football” moon will gradually pass above Mars and Saturn from night to night.

You can have a lot of fun viewing the planets with a small-to-moderate telescope.

Just remember to set your scope outside a good 30 to 45 minutes before you use it, along with all of the eyepieces you'll be using. Your optics have to acclimate to the outside temperature or you could wind up getting some really wacked up images.Unfortunately, both planets are taking a low westerly track across the sky this summer so we're forced to see them through more of Earth's blurring atmosphere near the horizon, but you can still get some good looks at both worlds.Honestly, I think you'll enjoy telescoping Saturn more than Mars even though Mars is so much brighter. On the red planet you may see some dark markings which are some of its many and large valleys.Assuming you have a telescope that gives you an upside-down, inverted image like most of them do, look for a whitish tinge on the lower edge of the disk. That's the northern polar cap.Viewing Saturn through a telescope is very exciting, especially if it's your first time. I never get tired of looking at it.You can easily see Saturn's ring system and swarming little “stars” which are the ringed planet's larger moons. Saturn, even without its ring system, is much larger than Mars, but it's dimmer in the sky because it's so far away at 856 million miles. You'll love, love, love Saturn.The other pair of planets is in a really tight celestial hug, but is much more of a challenge to see.Venus and Mercury, the two planets closer to the sun than we are in the solar system, are in nearly the same line of sight from our Earthly perch. They're less than a degree apart, which is about the diameter of a full moon in the sky.The extreme challenge in seeing them hugging is that they are extremely close to the west-northwest horizon. The two planets will become barely visible about 20 minutes or so after sunset and will set below the horizon within an hour of sunset.That's not much of a window to spot them. You'll need to be viewing them above an extremely low treeless horizon. The very best chance of seeing the planet pair is to do your searching on top of a hill.Forget about pointing a telescope. They'll appear way, way too fuzzy. Just seeing them with your naked eyes or maybe binoculars is enough of a feather in your astronomical pursuit!<i>Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/Paul and is author of the book, “Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations” published by Adventure Publications available at bookstores at http://www.adventurepublications.net.</i>