{"id":38032,"date":"2025-09-02T06:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T06:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/38032\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T06:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T06:19:06","slug":"the-sky-today-on-tuesday-september-2-mercury-meets-regulus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/38032\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sky Today on Tuesday, September 2: Mercury meets Regulus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tThe bright planet Mercury passes the star Regulus in Leo just before sunrise \u2014 if you\u2019re quick, you can spot them.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"620\" height=\"443\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/09022025.png\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe heart of Leo the Lion, Regulus, lies to the lower right of Mercury in the morning sky just before sunrise. Credit: Stellarium\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>At 6 A.M. EDT, Mercury will pass 1.2\u00b0 north of Regulus, observable in the east before sunrise from locations with clear eastern horizons.<\/li>\n<li>Mercury, with a magnitude of \u20131.3, will reach an altitude of 4\u00b0 approximately 30 minutes before sunrise, appearing to the lower left of Venus (magnitude not specified). Regulus (magnitude 1.4) will be located just over a degree to Mercury&#8217;s lower right and may require binoculars or a telescope for observation.<\/li>\n<li>Telescopic observation of Mercury will reveal its 5\u201d apparent width, 90% illumination, and smaller size compared to Venus (85% illumination and larger disk size).<\/li>\n<li>Provided local sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset times, and moon phase (73% waxing gibbous) for 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W, with the caveat that these times might differ slightly based on location.  Observation with optical instruments should cease several minutes before sunrise.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Mercury passes 1.2\u00b0 north of Regulus at 6 A.M. EDT; the pair is visible in the east just before sunrise, but it might be a challenging observation. You\u2019ll want to get to a location above the surrounding terrain if possible, with an eastern horizon free of tall trees or buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Rising around 5:30 A.M. local daylight time, Mercury reaches an altitude of 4\u00b0 roughly half an hour before sunrise. It\u2019s now magnitude \u20131.3, which should help it stand out against the brightening sky, although binoculars can also help you locate it to the far lower left of blazing Venus, which stands some 20\u00b0 high at this time. Magnitude 1.4 Regulus will be more challenging and may only be visible with binoculars or a telescope, just over a degree to the lower right of Mercury in the sky as they are rising. The star should be just within the same field of view as the planet with a telescope, and definitely within a single binocular field.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re using a telescope, take a moment to focus on Mercury as well. The tiny planet appears 5\u201d wide \u2014 nearly 2.5 times smaller than Venus\u2019 disk, currently \u2014 and is 90 percent lit, slightly more than Venus\u2019 85 percent. The latter, brighter planet hangs\u00a0 2\u00b0 directly below M44 this morning, so if you\u2019d like to catch a binocular view of the two, you can look for them a little earlier, while the sky is still dark \u2014 try some 60 to 90 minutes before sunrise.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Note that you should always put away any binoculars or telescope at least a few minutes before sunrise occurs from your location, which may differ slightly from the times listed below.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sunrise:<\/strong>\u00a06:29 A.M.<br \/><strong>Sunset:<\/strong>\u00a07:30 P.M.<br \/><strong>Moonrise:<\/strong>\u00a04:44 P.M.<br \/><strong>Moonset:<\/strong>\u00a012:33 A.M.\u00a0<br \/><strong>Moon Phase:<\/strong>\u00a0Waxing gibbous (73%)<br \/>*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 12 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">For a look ahead at more upcoming sky events, check out our full\u00a0<a style=\"box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 87, 138); transition-duration: 0.04s; max-width: none;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/tags\/sky-this-week\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sky This Week<\/a>\u00a0column.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List The bright planet Mercury passes the star Regulus in Leo just before sunrise \u2014&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,2209,133,2210],"class_list":{"0":"post-38032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-observing","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sky-today"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}