A conjunction of Mercury and Jupiter<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nThe Moon passes 2\u00b0 south of Venus at 5 A.M. EDT, although neither is visible at that time. Instead, the Moon rises around midmorning and remains visible until after sunset. By evening, it stands side by side with Venus in the twilit sky, both still within the bounds of the large constellation Virgo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the sky grows darker, bright Venus will quickly appear, about 9.5\u00b0 to the right of the crescent Moon. Observe the planet through a telescope and you will see that it is also a crescent, albeit one that is 48% lit. It reached dichotomy, when it appeared 50% lit, just last week, and will slowly wane even as its apparent angular diameter \u2014 now 25\u201d \u2014 grows.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To the upper left of the Moon is 1st-magnitude Spica, the brightest star in Virgo. See how soon you can pick it out as twilight fades. This star shines nearly 2,000 times brighter than our own Sun, from a distance of 250 light-years. Although we cannot split it visually, astronomers know it is a close binary system, with two stars just 0.12\u00a0AU apart, circling each other closer than the planet Mercury orbits the Sun.<\/p>\n
Sunrise:<\/strong> 6:13 A.M.
Sunset:<\/strong> 7:55 P.M.
Moonrise:<\/strong> 10:36 A.M.
Moonset:<\/strong> 9:45 P.M.
Moon Phase:<\/strong> Waxing crescent (22%)
*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 10 P.M. local time from the same location.\u00a0<\/p>\nMars has been making its way eastward through the constellation Gemini, pulling away from open cluster M35 and approaching the two bright stars Eta (\u03b7) and Mu (\u03bc) Geminorum.\u00a0Eta shines at magnitude 3.3 and Mu at magnitude 2.9; both are fainter than 1st-magnitude Mars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Check out the view in the early-morning sky of August 17, when Mars sits just over 1\u00b0 north of Eta Gem, to its upper left in the sky as this region rises. By 5 A.M. they are roughly 30\u00b0 high in the east, easy to pick out shortly before twilight begins to brighten the sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\t\tOn the 17th, Mars sits due north of Eta (\u03b7) Geminorum, forming an upside-down capital L shape with that star and nearby Mu (\u03bc) Geminorum. Credit: Stellarium<\/p>\n
This is a great chance to see for yourself our solar system in motion. Eta and Mu are excellent visual anchor points against which to measure the motion of Mars across the sky. Step outside at the same time over the next two days, and you\u2019ll see that by the 19th, Mars has moved to assume a similar position some 1\u00b0 north of Mu, now standing to that star\u2019s upper left.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alison Klesman<\/strong>\u00a0is senior editor of\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has studied a variety of topics, from minor planets to supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Catch our satellite side by side with bright planet Venus in the western sky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[18,19,17,2209,133,75779,451],"class_list":["post-640566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight","tag-space"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117106741341411423","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640566","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=640566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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