Geek post ahead. Your interesting bit of trivia for the week! :D

I learned from Jiaxin early this morning that apparently, that really bright star near the moon that was visible last night (it still is, tonight, and upon further research, I've found it'll be visible until 12th Nov) is actually Jupiter!

Through the meandering drift of an MSN convo on Monday night, Connor and I somehow got around to discussing the names of the days of the week and how they came by their names. That's how I learned that the days of the week in Latin and Japanese are actually named after the Sun, the Moon, and the first five planets (not including Earth).

Latin-based languages like French (the only Latin-based language that I have any knowledge of) have "inherited" this system of naming the days of the week as well. (Apparently it used to be the same in Chinese too - which explains why Japanese uses the same characters.)

In this system, Thursday is actually Jupiter's day! So I suppose it's fitting that Jupiter is visible tonight. :)

More explanations right this way: Weekday names on Wikipedia.

I'd explain it myself, but I can't seem to string it all together in a way that's not confusing!