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How do you know that particular star is a planet? While each of the visible planets possesses its own distinctive trademarks, there are some general characteristics for all of them. The first is their location in the sky. All the planets can be found along the ecliptic. The other major feature common to most of the planets is their brightness. The apparent magnitudes of the naked eye planets range from about –4 to +1.
In other words, the naked eye planets are usually at least as bright as the brightest stars and sometimes even brighter. Any bright "star" along the ecliptic that is not part of a constellation will be a planet.
The way to confirm that you have signed a planet is by looking at it through your binoculars. As explained previously the stars are so distant, that even through the largest telescope, they appear as a twinkling dot. A planet, though much smaller than star and relatively close to us, appears through binoculars as a small and steady-non-twinkling disk.
In order to appreciate and understand the planets, we will have to discard the celestial sphere method of looking at the sky, and turn to the Solar System, whose main components are the Sun and its planets.