Planets and Comet ISON

Lately while trying to view Comet ISON, I have been up early looking at the sky and enjoying the view to the east as stars and planets emerge from their sojourn around the Sun and start their trek across the sky. Saturn had been an evening sky object in the summer, disappeared from view in early fall, and is now arriving in the morning sky, with fleet-footed Mercury keeping it company.

These two planets are just barely visible this week in the glare of the Sun's early light, and are helpful markers in the quest to find Comet ISON. However, as ISON races toward its close encounter with the Sun on Thanksgiving day, it is pretty much out of sight, lost in the sunlight that bathes the eastern horizon.