Moon’s movements Our August evenings start with a crescent moon setting and Mercury below it in Leo. The messenger planet is hard to see at first from the northern hemisphere. But keep looking night to night and it’ll show up. On the opposite side of the sky, Saturn’s rising in Capricornus. The waxing moon moves […]
Earth farthest from the sun, Mercury closest Earth is farthest from the sun on the 4th. It’s 152 million kilometers or 94.5 million miles away. In six months, the sun’s disk will appear 3.6% bigger. That’s not something the human eye can detect—and don’t try without eye protection! Only in photographs or with measurements taken […]
The month starts with a waning crescent moon at northern lunistice and setting in the evening along with bright stars Procyon, Pollux, Castor, and Capella. Procyon is the bright star in the little dog Canis Minor. See Gomeisa to its right. Pollux and Castor are better known, because they are the head stars in Gemini […]
The morning “parade of planets” finishes April with Jupiter and Saturn very close. They’re as close as 0.2° at about 21 hours UT on the 30th. The best views are from about 105° east longitude. Too far east of there, and the closest conjunction hasn’t happened yet before the sun rises. Too far west of […]
Venus, Saturn, and Mars are in a dawn lineup as April begins. The red and ringed planets are in the east side of Capricornus. For northern hemisphere watchers, that’s on the left. From south of the equator, it’s the bottom of the constellation. Venus is between Capricornus and Aquarius. Observers in the low northern latitudes […]
All the naked eye planet watching this month is in the morning. A waxing crescent moon rises into the evening through Pisces early in the month. It’ll be near Uranus on the 6th. See the moon passing between the Pleiades and the Hyades on the evening of the 8th. Orion is high in the sky […]
Brilliant Venus shines left of Mars in the morning twilight at February’s start. Venus is in Scutum and Mars is above Kaus Borealis (the northern bow star) atop the Sagittarius teapot. Close to sunrise, you may be able to find Mercury below them left of Sagittarius. Venus and Mars draw closer to each other as […]
We start a new year with four naked eye planets in the evening sky. One is already on the way out of the party and it won’t be long before the rest follow it to the morning sky. You may be able to see Venus very close to the horizon in the southwest as darkness […]
All the naked eye planet watching this month is not long after sunset and not long before sunrise. The evening planet watching last longer, because some of the planets are higher than others at sunset and set later. And depending on how visible it is, you may catch Comet Leonard at either time. (The moving […]
In case you want to know which way it is to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, look at Venus in the southwest just after sunset on November 1. It’s almost in our line of sight to the galactic center. The planet is about five minutes, 21 seconds of light time from us. It […]