If you have a major life event to plan, maybe Friday would be a good date for it, because the heavens will be smiling down on you.

In the early pre-dawn sky, a face of warmth will appear in the east, thanks to a conjunction of two planets and the moon.

The brighter of the two planets, Venus, will appear to the left, while Saturn will make up the right eye of the phenomenon.

They will be joined by the waning crescent moon that morning, completing the smile.

While the two planets will appear close, in reality they are not. Their orbits are on opposite sides of that of Earth, with the orbits of Jupiter and Mars also falling in between.

But, thanks to the positions they have in those orbits, they will align in the same field of vision.

While Venus, of the inner solar system, is usually easy to spot, appearing as the brightest object in either the morning or evening sky (other than the moon), Saturn, a gas giant of the outer planets, is usually a bit more difficult for amateur astronomers, not achieving the same magnitude of brightness and you have to know where to look for it.

But thanks to the close proximity of the moon on Friday morning, both will be easy to find.

Just look directly east and to the horizon in the hour before sunrise, which is at
6:02 a.m.

It’s an easy chance to see two planets with a casual glance, and in a form that is a bit outside the normal presentation.

Heath Harrison is The Ironton Tribune’s managing editor and has been fascinated by the night sky since reading H.A. Rey’s “Find the Constellations” as a six year old.