Sun rises at 5:57am.
Sun sets at 6:30pm.
Moon phase: Fourth Quarter, Waning Crescent
Moon rises at 1:29am
Moon sets at 1:52pm
Early evening
Its conjunction time this weekend! Look to the west after sunset to admire the brightest of the bright snuggling up close together, conjoining like twins as it were – it’s Jupiter and Venus separated by only a fifteenth of a degree! So these two brilliant worlds will easily fit within the same binocular or telescopic field of view. Best viewing will be from about 6:50 to 7:25pm. The pair will set on Saturday about 7:40pm and even earlier on Sunday, at about 7:35.
After the conjunction has dipped below the horizon, turn to the right to catch sight of the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. Looking north, you will see the Big Dipper setting on the left and Cassiopeia (the sideways W we learned last weekend) rising on the right. These are not high up in the sky so you may have to get a location with a clear view to the north, but we are not so far south that we lose sight of the North Star, Polaris, which sits at the end of the Little Dipper’s handle. Polaris is the only star in the sky that doesn’t shift its position; it marks the celestial “hub” around which the whole sky spins – once every 24 hours.
Meanwhile
In the southern skies, the three brightest lights continue to be the star Antares and the planets Saturn and Mars, but now something has changed about that triangle we have come to recognize. Night after night since early spring, they have held their position steadily, but Mars is on the move. Relative to the others, Mars is shifting eastward and thus inverting the triangle, so it’s still there. But watch as night after night, it stretches out, elongating until in mid September, the triangle is no more.
Late night
By 1:00am the eastern horizon will have seen the rising of Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades which are some of the most loved constellations, bright with shapes that are easy to recognize and allow for stories about how the hunter (Orion) is hunting the bull (Taurus) while the seven sisters (the Pleiades) look on from a distant hillside. By 3:00am on Sunday, the constellation Gemini, or the twins, will rise in the east-northeast with the crescent moon between them, like a play-toy that they share.
Let’s hope the clouds abate and give us a clear view of the starry, starry nights this weekend.
Thank you for keeping up with the Night Sky articles. If you are out later on in the week, each star rises about four minutes earlier each day than written here, and the moon rises 50 minutes later. Night Sky is researched and compiled by Lisa Davis-Burnett. Questions or comments? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
