What direction do the planets typically move through the zodiac constellations from night to night?

relative their motion through one night?What direction do the planets typically move through the zodiac constellations from night to night?
As you observe them...
Moon , Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and all outer planets have their "rise time" [ you can download ephemeris ] to find their positions degree by degree in the sky particularly in zodiac as background.

Click to check location of planets
http://www.sacred-texts.com/time/cal/ast鈥?/a>

The inner planets like Mercury and venus will never appear in the midnight sky , as they are very near to sun, and have got their "rising time" is close to sunrise. Venus is known as morning star. They may appear in the sky for hour or two before sunrise in the east or after sunset in the west , but never in the middle of the sky top overhead.

The speed of their movement from zodiac to zodiac varies , because of their distance from the sun.
Each planets have their fixed orbital time. Some are orbiting faster eg mercury , venus, mars .
So their position in the sky appears as they are changing from zodiac to zodiac very fast in comparison with other slow moving planets as jupiter venus, Neptune etc. they may appear to move in reverse direction too, but it is not like that , it is illusion created by orbiting earth.

All the planets are orbiting the sun in same directions, some are faster others are slow.


from of Planet Orbit
Sun - (x10 ^22 kg) - of Sun
(million km) - (days)
Planet - Distance - Mass - Time [days] for 1 orbit

Mercury - 58 - 33.0 - 88.0

Venus - 108 - 487 - 224.7

Earth - 150 - 598 - 365.2

Mars - 228 - 64.2 - 687.0

Jupiter - 778 - 190,000 - 4332

Saturn - 1,429 - 56,900 - 10760

Uranus - 2,871 - 8,690 - 30700

Neptune - 4,504 - 10,280 - 60200

Pluto - 5,913 - 1.49 - 90600What direction do the planets typically move through the zodiac constellations from night to night?
Most of the time the planets move from west to east (right to left in the northern hemisphere), except close to the time of opposition (for exterior planets) when they reverse direction for a time because of the Earth's rapid motion: this is called retrograde motion.



Remember, east and west in the sky are opposite to what they are on the surface of the Earth because we're on the inside looking out.



This motion of the planets is much smaller than their daily motion due to the Earth's rotation, which is from east to west (left to right in the northern hemisphere).