What is the brightest object in the sky? Why the Sun of course.  Second brightest? The Moon.  Most people are able to answer this question quite easily, but what is the third brightest? The fourth?  Many people will confidently say Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, or Polaris the north star.  The answer is that the planet Venus is third and the planet Jupiter is fourth.  It shouldn’t be that surprising that planets hold these positions.  They are much closer than the distant background of stars, and the human species has been observing them since the dawn of recorded...