A Beautiful Conjunction of 3 Planets, a Cluster, and the Moon

Next Monday and Tuesday morning (August 21st and 22nd) just before sunrise, the lightening eastern sky will host a beautiful conjunction of shallow- and deep-sky objects. Monday morning has the slender crescent of a 5% waning crescent moon rising first, followed by the Beehive Cluster - M44, then Venus, followed by Saturn, and then Mercury, all visible within a 15-degree patch of sky (15 degrees is about the distance spanned by one’s little finger to index finger at arms length when spread - like showing the count of four). Tuesday morning has the moon rising later - and a razor-thin 1.5% - after M44 and Venus. Then, from moon to Mercury will be less than a scant 8 degrees! Picking faint Saturn out of the glow of the rising sun will be a challenge, but well worth it as it is not often that conjunctions like this occur.