No, Polaris cannot be seen from the northern hemisphere. After sunset, we have about half an hour of twilight. Light from an extremely hot star ionizes the hydrogen gas around it. The electrons recombine. The planets appear to move in the sky through the constellations of the zodiac.
Inferior planets take more time to go around the Sun than superior planets.
The planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at the center of the ellipse. A planet is 1.5 Astronomical Units from the Sun. There is a large cloud of cold gas between us and the star zeta Ophiucus. Two stars have the same size and have the same temperature, but one is twice as far away as the other.