An Evening Object As September begins, the little planet is entering the evening sky. It will reach greatest eastern elongation in early October. That will be your opportunity to try to catch a glipse of the innermost planet. The smallest of the primary planets zips around the Sun in only 88 days, so keeping track of its whereabouts is a challenge throughout the year. It is never much more than 26 degrees away from the Sun in our sky, so it will either be a difficult early evening object, or a difficult morning object just before dawn. In nearly sixty years of observing the sky, I have seen Mercury fewer than half a dozen times. Maybe if I tried a little harder, I could catch a glimpse a few times a year!