Binoculars will help you pick out Pollux and Castor to the right of the crescent Moon low in bright twilight on Sunday evening the 25th. Their visibility in a bright sky is exaggerated here.

Two days later the thickening Moon passes Regulus . . .

. . .and then on the 30th at first quarter, the Moon puts on a show with Jupiter and especially Gamma (γ) Virginis. (The Moon's position in these scenes is always plotted exact for latitude 40° N, longitude 90° W, near the middle of North America. The Moon is always shown three times its actual apparent size.)

Friday, June 23

• This is the time of year when, after dark, the dim Little Dipper floats straight upward from Polaris (the end of its handle) — like a helium balloon on a string escaped from a summer evening party. Through light pollution, all you may see of the Little Dipper are Polaris at its bottom and Kochab, the lip of the Little Dipper's bowl, at the top.

• New Moon (exact at 10:31 p.m. EDT).

Saturday, June 24

• This is the time of year when the two brightest stars of summer, Arcturus and Vega, are equally high overhead soon after dark: Arcturus toward the southwest, Vega toward the east.

Arcturus and Vega are 37 and 25 light-years away, respectively. They represent the two commonest types of naked-eye stars: a yellow-orange K giant and a white A main-sequence star. They're 150 and 50 times brighter than the Sun, respectively — which, combined with their nearness, is why they dominate the evening sky.

Sunday, June 25

• By the time it's fully dark this week, Altair shines well up in the east. Helping to identify it is its little sidekick Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae), a finger-width above it or to its upper left. (They're unrelated; Altair is 17 light-years from us; Tarazed is about 460.)

Look left of Altair, by hardly more than a fist width, for the compact little constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin.

Monday, June 26

• The tiny black shadow of Io crosses Jupiter's face tonight from 10:23 p.m. to 12:33 a.m. EDT, when it leaves Jupiter's western limb. Then just three minutes later, Europa exits from in front of the western limb.

Tuesday, June 27

• This evening, spot 1st-magnitude Regulus within 1° or 2° of the waxing crescent Moon (for North America).

Wednesday, June 28

• Do you know about the dark Propeller in the familiar M13 star cluster in Hercules? See Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders column in the July Sky & Telescope, page 54.

Thursday, June 29

• The central stars of the constellation Lyra, forming a small triangle and parallelogram, dangle to the lower right from bright Vega high in the east. The two brightest stars of the pattern, after Vega, are the two forming the bottom of the parallelogram: Beta and Gamma Lyrae, Sheliak and Sulafat. They're currently lined up vertically. Beta is the one on top.

Friday, June 30

• First-quarter Moon (exact at 8:51 p.m. EDT). The "star" left of the moon is Jupiter.

• And this evening, the Moon's dark limb will occult (cover) the bright, tight double star Gamma Virginis (Porrima) for much of the U.S. and Canada. The event happens in daylight for the West, twilight for the central longitudes of the continent, and later in darkness for the East.

See more in the July Sky & Telescope, page 50. Here are detailed timetables for hundreds of cities and towns. (The UT date of the event is July 1st.) Plan ahead!

Saturday, July 1

• The Moon this evening forms a broad triangle with Jupiter and Spica in the southwest.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

This just might be the sharpest image of Saturn ever taken from the ground. Damian Peach and six colleagues acquired it on June 11th using the 1-meter Pic Du Midi reflector high in the French Pyrenees. "Rarely seen details are observed, such as small ringlets within Ring C, including the Maxwell and Colombo divisions," writes Peach. "The Encke division is easily observed around the entire [outer] A ring. Note the strong blue colouration of the southern hemisphere shining through the Cassini division." South is up.

If you've wondered why you can't see Io and Europa in your scope when they're crossing Jupiter's face, it's because they're about the same brightness and color as Jupiter itself. The top tick points to Io, the bottom tick to Europa. Christopher Go took this image at 10:55 UT June 16, 2017. South is up.

Mercury and Mars are buried deep in the glow of sunset.

Venus (magnitude –4.2) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.1, in Virgo) shines brightly in the southwest during evening. Spica, magnitude +1.0, glitters 11° left of it. In a telescope, Jupiter has shrunk to 38 arcseconds wide.

Saturn (magnitude 0.0, in southern Ophiuchus) glows pale yellowish in the southeast to south during evening. Fiery Antares, less bright, is 15° to Saturn's right or lower right. Delta Scorpii, the third brightest object in the area, catches the eye half that far to the upper right of Antares.

Uranus (magnitude 5.9, in Pisces) is well up in the east before the beginning of dawn.

Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) is higher in the southeast before the beginning of dawn.

__________________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

__________________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Vaccines do stop diseases. Carbon dioxide does warm the globe. Science and reason are no political conspiracy; they are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, June 23 – July 1 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Waxing toward full, the Moon passes over Antares and Saturn

Friday, June 30

• First-quarter Moon (exact at 8:51 p.m. EDT). The "star" left of the moon is Jupiter.

• And this evening, the Moon's dark limb will occult (cover) the bright, tight double star Gamma Virginis (Porrima) for much of the U.S. and Canada. The event happens in daylight for the West, twilight for the central longitudes of the continent, and later in darkness for the East. Read more in the July Sky & Telescope, page 50. Here are detailed timetables for hundreds of cities and towns. (The UT date of the event is July 1st.) Plan ahead!

Saturday, July 1

• The Moon in the southwest this evening forms a broad triangle with Jupiter and Spica, as shown above.

Sunday, July 2

• By the time it's fully dark, Altair shines well up in the east. Helping to identify it is its little sidekick Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae), a finger-width above it or to its upper left. (They're unrelated; Altair is 17 light-years from us; Tarazed is about 460.)

Look left of Altair, by hardly more than a fist width, for the compact little constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin.

Monday, July 3

• Look far lower right of the Moon at nightfall for Spica; to the right of Spica shines bright Jupiter. Look far lower left of the Moon for orange Antares; left of Antares is pale-yellow Saturn. These star-and-planet pairs form a roughly symmetrical pattern with the Moon this evening.

Venus shines in the east-northeast in early dawn this month . . .

. . . while its background stars climb toward the upper right.

• Before and during dawn for the next few mornings, Venus is passing about 7° south (lower right) of the Pleiades.

• Earth is at the aphelion of its orbit, its farthest from the Sun for the year (only 3% farther than at perihelion in January).

Tuesday, July 4

• Waiting for fireworks to start? Point out some sky sights to folks around you. The waxing gibbous Moon is almost due south at dusk. Look lower left of it for orange Antares, one of the brightest "red" supergiants in the sky. Left of Antares is Saturn. Meanwhile, much farther to the right of the Moon, Jupiter shines brightly in the southwest.

Wednesday, July 5

• The Moon shines above orange Antares this evening. Upper right of Antares, and lower right of the Moon, is the near-vertical row of three stars marking the head of Scorpius. The top star of the row is Beta Scorpii or Graffias, a fine double star for telescopes.

Just 1° below Beta Sco is the fainter, very wide naked-eye pair Omega¹ and Omega² Scorpii, oriented diagonally. Binoculars may show their slight color difference.

Left of Beta by 1.6° is Nu Scorpii, another fine telescopic double. High power in good seeing reveals that Nu's brighter component is itself a close binary, separation 2 arcseconds.

Thursday, July 6

• Catch golden Saturn shining about 3° below the waxing gibbous Moon, as shown above.

Friday, July 7

• The nearly full Moon shines over the Teapot of Sagittarius after dark tonight, as shown above. Look for it carefully for its stars through the moonlight. The Teapot is about the size of your fist at arm's length, with its handle to the left and its spout to the right. Binoculars may help.

Saturday, July 8

• The full Moon is up in the southeast as twilight fades. Look far to its upper left for Altair, and far to its upper right for Saturn.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

This could be the sharpest image of Saturn ever taken from the ground. Damian Peach and six colleagues acquired it on June 11th using the 1-meter Pic Du Midi reflector high in the French Pyrenees. "Rarely seen details are observed, such as small ringlets within Ring C, including the Maxwell and Colombo divisions," writes Peach. "The Encke division is easily observed around the entire [outer] A ring." South is up.

And is this the best image of Jupiter ever taken from the ground? The same team at Pic du Midi took it the same night (June 11, 2017) — "months after opposition," notes Peach (as indicated by the slightly sideways illumination causing the shading on the left). North is up.

Mercury and Mars are deep down in the glow of sunset.

Venus (magnitude –4.2) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.0, in Virgo) shines brightly in the southwest during evening. Spica (magnitude +1.0) glitters 10° left of it. In a telescope, Jupiter has shrunk to 37 arcseconds wide.

NASA's Juno spacecraft will fly over Jupiter's Great Red Spot on July 10th at a distance of only 9,000 kilometers. This flyby ought to provide the most detailed imagery of the Red Spot ever. Here's some recent infrared imagery of Jupiter in support of the mission. Update: And more.

Saturn (magnitude +0.1, in southern Ophiuchus) glows pale yellowish in the south-southeast to south during evening. Fiery Antares, less bright, is 14° to Saturn's right or lower right. Delta Scorpii, the third brightest object in the area, catches the eye half that far to the upper right of Antares.

Uranus (magnitude 5.9, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) are well placed in the east and southeast, respectively, before the beginning of dawn. Finder charts.

__________________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

__________________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Vaccines stop diseases. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics. Science and reason are no political conspiracy; they are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, June 30 – July 8 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The nearly full Moon lines up with Saturn and Antares on the evening of the 7th.

Venus starts the week above Aldebaran . . .

. . . and ends the week closer to Aldebaran's upper left.

Friday, July 7

• The nearly full Moon shines over the Sagittarius Teapot after dark tonight. Look carefully for the Teapot's stars through the moonlight. The Teapot is about the size of your fist at arm's length, with its handle to the left and its spout to the right. Binoculars may help.

Saturday, July 8

• The full Moon is low in the southeast as the stars come out. Look far to the Moon's upper left for Altair, and far to the Moon's upper right for Saturn.

Sunday, July 9

• The Big Dipper, still high in the northwest after dark, is turning around to "scoop up water" through the evenings of summer and early fall.

Monday, July 10

• In very early dawn Tuesday morning, you'll find Venus lined up with the Pleiades above it and Aldebaran below it.

Tuesday, July 11

• Double stars in the top of Scorpius. The two brightest points due south after twilight ends are Saturn and, right or lower right of it, Antares. To the right and upper right of Antares is the nearly vertical row of three stars marking the head of Scorpius. The top star of the row is Beta Scorpii or Graffias, a fine double star for telescopes.

Just 1° lower left of Beta Sco is the fainter, very wide naked-eye pair Omega¹ and Omega² Scorpii, oriented diagonally. Binoculars may show their slight color difference.

Upper left of Beta by 1.6° is Nu Scorpii, another fine telescopic double. High power in good seeing reveals that Nu's brighter component is itself a close binary, separation 2 arcseconds.

Wednesday, July 12

• Europa: now you see it, now you don't.  Telescope users in western North America can watch an unusual event on Jupiter's eastern limb this evening. At 9:18 p.m. PDT, Europa emerges out of occultation from behind the planet, seeming to bud off from Jupiter's edge. And then just three minutes later it fades away again into eclipse by Jupiter's shadow.

The events are gradual. Use high power to see Europa so close to the planet's glare.

Thursday, July 13

• Venus is passing 3° north (upper left) of Aldebaran in the dawn this morning and Friday morning. See the illustration above.

Binoculars will help with finding Mercury and its fainter neighbors. Their visibility in bright twilight is exaggerated here.

Friday, July 14

• Mercury is having a poor apparition low in evening twilight this month. But it's bright enough (magnitude –0.2 this evening) that you can pick it up anyway if the air is good and clear. Your best chance is probably about a half hour after sunset, as shown at right.

• One hour after sunset, as twilight is fading deeper and the stars are coming out, you'll find the two brightest stars of summer, Vega and Arcturus, high overhead equally far from the zenith: Vega toward the east, and Arcturus toward the southwest (depending on your location).

Saturday, July 15

• The tail of Scorpius is low in the south after darkness is complete. How low depends on how far north or south you live: the farther south, the higher. Look for the two stars especially close together in the tail. These are Lambda and fainter Upsilon Scorpii, known as the Cat's Eyes, as shown at the top of this page. They're canted at an angle; the cat is tilting his head and winking.

The Cat's Eyes point west (right) by nearly a fist-width toward Mu Scorpii, a much tighter pair known as the Little Cat's Eyes. Can you resolve Mu without using binoculars? It's hard!

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

This could be the sharpest image of Saturn ever taken from the ground. Damian Peach and six colleagues acquired it on June 11th using the 1-meter Pic Du Midi reflector high in the French Pyrenees. "Rarely seen details are observed, such as small ringlets within Ring C, including the Maxwell and Colombo divisions," writes Peach. "The Encke division is easily observed around the entire [outer] A ring." South is up.

And is this the best image of Jupiter ever taken from the ground? The same team at Pic du Midi took it the same night (June 11, 2017) — "months after opposition," notes Peach (as indicated by the slightly sideways illumination causing the shading on the left). North is up.

Mercury (roughly magnitude –0.5) is very low in west to west-northwest about a half hour after sunset.

Venus (magnitude –4.2) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn. Aldebaran, much fainter at magnitude +0.9, is about 5° below Venus at the beginning of this week, then lower right of it, then directly right of it around week's end.

Mars is lost behind the glare of the Sun.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.0, in Virgo) shines showily in the southwest to west during evening. Spica (magnitude +1.0) glitters 10° left of it. In a telescope, Jupiter has shrunk to 37 or 36 arcseconds wide.

NASA's Juno spacecraft flies over Jupiter's Great Red Spot on July 10th at a distance of only 9,000 kilometers. The flyby ought to provide the most detailed imagery of the Red Spot ever, once the data are processed and images are released. Here's some recent infrared imagery of Jupiter in support of the mission. Here's more.

Saturn (magnitude +0.1, in southern Ophiuchus) glows steadily in the south during and after dusk. Fiery Antares, less bright, twinkles 14° to Saturn's right or lower right. Delta Scorpii, the third brightest object in the area, catches the eye half as far to the upper right of Antares.

Uranus (magnitude 5.8, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) await high in the southeastern side of the sky before the beginning of dawn. Finder charts.

__________________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

__________________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Vaccines stop diseases. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics. Science and reason are no political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, July 7 – 15 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Binoculars will help with finding Mercury and its fainter neighbors. Their visibility in bright twilight is exaggerated here.

Friday, July 14

• Mercury is having a poor apparition low in evening twilight this month. But it's bright enough (magnitude –0.2 this evening) that you can pick it up anyway if the air is good and clear. Your best chance is probably about a half hour after sunset, as shown at right.

• One hour after sunset, as twilight is fading deeper and the stars are coming out, you'll find the two brightest stars of summer, Vega and Arcturus, high overhead equally far from the zenith: Vega toward the east, and Arcturus toward the southwest (depending on your location).

Saturday, July 15

• The tail of Scorpius is low in the south after darkness is complete. How low depends on how far north or south you live: the farther south, the higher. Look for the two stars especially close together in the tail. These are Lambda and fainter Upsilon Scorpii, known as the Cat's Eyes. They're canted at an angle; the cat is tilting his head and winking.

The Cat's Eyes point west (right) by nearly a fist-width toward Mu Scorpii, a much tighter pair known as the Little Cat's Eyes. Can you resolve Mu without using binoculars? It's hard!

Sunday, July 16

• The Big Dipper, still high in the northwest after dark, is turning around to "scoop up water" through the evenings of summer and early fall.

• Last-quarter Moon (exact at 3:26 p.m. EDT). The Moon rises tonight around 2 a.m. daylight-saving time and is high in the southeast by Monday's dawn.

Monday, July 17

• If you have a dark enough sky, the Milky Way forms a magnificent arch very high across the whole eastern sky after nightfall is complete. It runs all the way from below Cassiopeia in the north-northeast, up and across Cygnus and the Summer Triangle high in the east below bright Vega, and down past the spout of the Sagittarius Teapot in the south.

Tuesday, July 18

• The first "star" you're likely to see coming out after sunset this month is bright Jupiter, in the southwest. Once you find it, examine the sky 30° above it (three fists at arm's length) for Arcturus, two magnitudes fainter.

Once the night is completely dark, look for the kite-shaped pattern of Bootes extending upper right from Arcturus. It's two fists long.

Set your alarm to catch the crescent Moon with Venus early in the dawn of Thursday the 20th.

Wednesday, July 19

• Early in Thursday's dawn, and even a bit earlier, Venus and the waning crescent moon shine together in the east, as shown here. Upper right of them is Aldebaran, and above Aldebaran are the Pleiades. Left of the Moon and Venus is 2nd-magnitude El Nath, Beta Tauri.

Thursday, July 20

• With the advance of summer, the Sagittarius Teapot, in the south after dark now, is starting to tilt and pour from its spout to the right. The Teapot will tilt farther and farther for the rest of the summer — or for much of the night, if you stay out very late.

Friday, July 21

• Starry Scorpius is sometimes called "the Orion of Summer" for its brightness and its prominent red supergiant (Antares in the case of Scorpius, Betelgeuse for Orion). But Scorpius is a lot lower in the south than Orion for those of us at mid-northern latitudes. That means Scorpius has only one really good evening month: July. Catch Scorpius due south just after dark now, before it starts to tilt lower toward the southwest. It's full of deep-sky objects for binoculars or a telescope — if you have a detailed star atlas to find them with (see below).

Saturday, July 22

• We're only a third of the way through summer, but already W-shaped Cassiopeia, a constellation better known for fall and winter evenings, is climbing up in the north-northeast as evening grows late. And the Great Square of Pegasus, emblem of fall, comes up to balance on one corner just over the eastern horizon.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

    If you've been spoiled by the recent pix here from the pro-am planetary imaging teams using 1-meter telescopes in Chile and at Pic du Midi in France, this one taken with the 1-meter Chilescope on July 9th may not look like much. "Very poor seeing," writes Damian Peach. The image looks more like Saturn looks visually in a backyard scope a third that size (meaning a 12-inch) during excellent seeing. So I've shrunk it down to resemble the view in my 12-inch reflector at 200x on the rare occasions when the seeing is rock-steady.
    South is up. The Cassini Division is visible all around, the outer A Ring and inner B ring brighten toward the division's edge, the dim, innermost C ring is perceptible with effort, and there's no sign of the Encke Gap. On the globe, the bright Equatorial Zone and darker North Equatorial Belt are easy. Click here for the Chilescope team's much larger full-size view (with north up).

Mercury (magnitude 0) is very low in west about a half hour after sunset. Good luck.

Venus (magnitude –4.1) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn. Aldebaran, much fainter at magnitude +0.9, moves away from Venus's right toward the upper right this week.

Mars is hidden behind the glare of the Sun.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.9, in Virgo) shines brightly in the west to southwest in early evening. Spica (magnitude +1.0) glitters 9° left of it. In a telescope, Jupiter has shrunk to 36 arcseconds wide.

Saturn (magnitude +0.2, in the legs of Ophiuchus) glows steadily in the south during and after dusk. Fiery Antares, less bright, twinkles 13° to Saturn's lower right. Delta Scorpii, the third brightest object in the area, catches the eye half that far to the right or upper right of Antares.

Uranus (magnitude 5.8, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) are high in the southeastern side of the sky before the beginning of dawn. Finder charts.

__________________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

__________________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Science and reason are no political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, July 14 – 22 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Friday, July 21

• We're only a third of the way through summer, but already W-shaped Cassiopeia, a constellation better known for decorating fall and winter evenings, is climbing up in the north-northeast after dark. And the Great Square of Pegasus, icon of fall, comes up to balance on one corner just over the east horizon.

Saturday, July 22

• The Big Dipper, still high in the northwest after dark, is turning around to "scoop up water" through the evenings of summer and early fall.

• Starry Scorpius is sometimes called "the Orion of Summer" for its brightness and its prominent red supergiant (Antares in the case of Scorpius, Betelgeuse for Orion). But Scorpius passes a lot lower in the south than Orion for those of us at mid-northern latitudes. That means Scorpius has only one really good evening month: July.

Catch Scorpius due south right after nightfall, before it starts to tilt lower toward the southwest. It's full of deep-sky objects for binoculars or a telescope — if you have a detailed star atlas to find them with. (See the Pocket Sky Atlas below.)

Sunday, July 23

• The tail of Scorpius curves low to the lower left of the Scorpion's bright head and main body. How low depends on how far north or south you live: the farther south, the higher. Look for the two stars especially close together in the tail. These are Lambda and fainter Upsilon Scorpii, known as the Cat's Eyes. They're canted at an angle; the cat is tilting his head and winking.

The Cat's Eyes point west (right) by nearly a fist-width toward Mu Scorpii, a much tighter pair known as the Little Cat's Eyes. Can you resolve Mu without using binoculars? It takes very sharp vision!

• New Moon (exact at 5:46 a.m. July 23rd EDT).

In bright twilight, look low and use the Moon to find your way to Mercury and Regulus. Mercury moves fast with respect to the background stars; the pair is drawn here for the 24th. On the 25th, Mercury will be closer to Regulus's lower left.

Monday, July 24

• Using binoculars about 30 minutes after sunset, look very low in the west for Mercury and fainter Regulus with the thin crescent Moon to their lower right, as shown here.

Tuesday, July 25

• Now, in the west in twilight, a thicker, higher crescent moon shines upper left of Mercury and Regulus. The planet and star are in conjunction this evening, with Mercury to Regulus's lower right. (Their orientation in the scene here is for yesterday evening.)

Wednesday, July 26

• If you have a dark enough sky, the Milky Way forms a magnificent arch very high across the whole eastern sky after nightfall is complete. It runs all the way from below Cassiopeia in the north-northeast, up and across Cygnus and the Summer Triangle high in the east under bright Vega, and down past the spout of the Sagittarius Teapot in the south.

Waxing further, the Moon passes the lineup of Spica, Jupiter, and Gamma (γ) Virginis.

Thursday, July 27

• The first "star" you're likely to see coming out after sunset is Jupiter in the southwest. It's about a fist at arm's length left of the Moon this evening, as shown here.

Once you find Jupiter, examine the sky about three fists above it for Arcturus, two magnitudes fainter.

As night deepens, you can see that the Moon forms the right-hand end of a gently curving arc with, to its left, faint Gamma Virginis, Jupiter, and Spica.

Friday, July 28

• Jupiter shines under the Moon this evening, more or less as drawn here (their exact placement will depend on your location).

• The Sagittarius Teapot is in the south after darkness is complete. It's about a fist at arm's length wide, and it's now tilting to pour from its spout on the right. The Teapot will tilt farther and farther, pouring out for the rest of the summer — or for much of the night if you stay out late.

Saturday, July 29

• Lower right of the Moon at dusk, look for Spica. Right of Spica shines brighter Jupiter.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

If you've been spoiled by the recent pix here from the pro-am planetary imaging teams using 1-meter telescopes in Chile and at Pic du Midi in France, this image taken with the 1-meter Chilescope on July 9th may not look like much. "Very poor seeing," writes Damian Peach. The image looks about like Saturn looks visually in a backyard scope a third that size (meaning a 12-inch) during excellent seeing. So I've shrunk it down to resemble the view in my own 12-inch reflector at 200x on the rare occasions when the seeing is rock-steady.
    South is up. The Cassini Division is visible all around, the outer A Ring and inner B ring brighten toward the division's edge, the dim, innermost C ring is perceptible with effort, and there's no sign of the Encke Gap. On the globe, the bright Equatorial Zone and darker North Equatorial Belt are easy. Click here for the Chilescope team's much larger full-size view (with north up).

Mercury (magnitude 0) is low above the west-northwest horizon 30 or 40 minutes after sunset. Catch it while you can.

Venus (magnitude –4.1) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn. Look for fainter orange Aldebaran increasingly far to its upper right. To Venus's lower right, orange Betelgeuse is rising.

Mars is hidden in conjunction behind the glare of the Sun.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.9, in Virgo) shines brightly in the southwest in early evening. Fainter Spica (magnitude +1.0) glitters 8° or 9° left of it. In a telescope, Jupiter has shrunk to 35 arcseconds wide.

Saturn (magnitude +0.2, in the legs of Ophiuchus) glows steadily in the south at nightfall. Fiery Antares, less bright, twinkles 13° to Saturn's lower right. Delta Scorpii, the third-brightest object in the area, catches the eye about half that far to the upper right of Antares.

Uranus (magnitude 5.8, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) are high in the southeast and south, respectively, before dawn begins. Finder charts.

__________________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

__________________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Science and reason are no political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, July 21– 29 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Watch the Moon pass the lineup of Spica, Jupiter, and Gamma (γ) Virginis from night to night.

Friday, July 28

• Jupiter shines under the Moon this evening, more or less as drawn here (their exact placement will depend on your location).

• The Sagittarius Teapot is in the south after darkness is complete. It's about a fist at arm's length wide, and it's now tilting to pour from its spout on the right. The Teapot will tilt farther and farther, pouring out for the rest of the summer — or for much of the night if you stay out late.

Saturday, July 29

• Lower right of the Moon at dusk, look for Spica. Right of Spica shines brighter Jupiter.

Sunday, July 30

• First-quarter Moon (exact at 11:23 a.m. EDT). The Moon is in Libra, far upper left of Spica and Jupiter at dusk, and far right of Scorpius and Saturn.

• Starry Scorpius is sometimes called "the Orion of Summer" for its brightness and its prominent red supergiant (Antares in the case of Scorpius, Betelgeuse for Orion). But Scorpius passes a lot lower in the south than Orion for those of us at mid-northern latitudes. That means Scorpius has only one really good evening month: July, which is almost over.

Catch Scorpius in the south-southwest now right after darkness is complete, before it tilts lower toward the southwest. It's full of deep-sky objects for binoculars or a telescope — if you have a detailed star atlas to find them with. (See the Pocket Sky Atlas below.)

The tail of Scorpius curves low to the lower left of the Scorpion's bright head and main body. How low depends on how far north or south you live: the farther south, the higher Scorpius appears. Look for the two stars especially close together in the tail. These are Lambda and fainter Upsilon Scorpii, known as the Cat's Eyes. They're canted at an angle; the cat is tilting his head and winking.

The Cat's Eyes point west (right) by nearly a fist-width toward Mu Scorpii, a much tighter pair known as the Little Cat's Eyes. Can you resolve Mu without using binoculars? It takes very sharp vision!

Monday, July 31

• The Big Dipper, still high in the northwest after dark, is turning around to "scoop up water" through the evenings of summer and early fall.

Tuesday, August 1

• The waxing gibbous Moon this evening forms a triangle with Antares to its lower left and brighter Saturn more directly to its left, as shown here.

Wednesday, August 2

• Now the Moon poses with Saturn. Although they look close together, Saturn tonight is is 3,500 times farther away: 81 light-minutes distant, compared to the Moon's 1.3 light-seconds.

Thursday, August 3

• Saturn shines right of the Moon at dusk, and lower right of it as night grows late.

Friday, August 4

• As soon as it's dark, look lower right of the bright Moon for the Teapot of Sagittarius. It's about the size of your fist at arm's length, tilting to pour to the right from its spout.

Saturday, August 5

• The Moon shines low in the southeast as the stars come out. How early can you spot Altair, three fists at arm's length to the Moon's upper left? How about brighter Vega, nearing the zenith from the east?

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Venus, shining brightly in early dawn, is still near the horns of Taurus at the beginning of the week, forming a big triangle with Aldebaran and Betelgeuse. . .

. . . but by week's end Venus has entered the feet of Gemini, and the triangle it forms with Aldebaran and Betelgeuse has morphed quite a bit. Venus is holding almost steady with respect to your dawn landscape, while the background stars slide to the upper right from morning to morning.

If you've been spoiled by the recent pix here from the pro-am planetary imaging teams using 1-meter telescopes in Chile and at Pic du Midi in France, this image taken with the 1-meter Chilescope on July 9th may not look like much. "Very poor seeing," writes Damian Peach. The image looks about like Saturn looks visually in a backyard scope a third that size (meaning a 12-inch) during excellent seeing. So I've shrunk it down to resemble the view in my own 12-inch reflector at 200x on the rare occasions when the seeing is rock-steady.
     South is up. The Cassini Division is visible all around, the outer A Ring and inner B ring brighten toward the division's edge, the dim, innermost C ring is perceptible with effort, and there's no sign of the Encke Gap. On the globe, the bright Equatorial Zone and darker North Equatorial Belt are easy. Click here for the Chilescope team's much larger full-size view (with north up).

Mercury fades from magnitude +0.2 to +0.6 this week and is also sinking lower in the afterglow of sunset. Look for it just above the due-west horizon 30 minutes after sundown.

Venus (magnitude –4.0) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn, as shown here. Watch the changing shape of the triangle it forms from morning to morning with fainter orange Aldebaran to its upper right and orange Betelgeuse rising to its lower right.

Mars is hidden behind the glare of the Sun.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.9, in Virgo) shines brightly in the west-southwest in early evening. Fainter Spica (magnitude +1.0) glitters 7° or 8° left of it. In a telescope, poor Jupiter has shrunk to 35 or 34 arcseconds wide as it swings toward the far side of the Sun from Earth's viewpoint.

Saturn (magnitude +0.2, in the legs of Ophiuchus) glows steadily in the south at nightfall. Fiery Antares, less bright, twinkles 13° to Saturn's lower right. Delta Scorpii, the third-brightest object in the area, catches the eye less far to the right or upper right of Antares.

Uranus (magnitude 5.8, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) are high in the southeastern sky in the hours before the first light of dawn. Finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics. Science and reason are no political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, July 28 – August 5 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The bright Moon tonight looks over the two iconic constellations of the southern evening sky in summer.

Friday, August 4

• As soon as it's dark, look lower right of the bright Moon for the Teapot of Sagittarius. It's about the size of your fist at arm's length, tilting to pour to the right, as shown here.

Saturday, August 5

• The Moon shines low in the southeast as the stars come out. How early can you spot Altair, three fists at arm's length to the Moon's upper left? How about brighter Vega, now nearing the zenith from the east?

Sunday, August 6

• Bright Vega passes closest to overhead around 10 or 11 p.m., depending on how far east or west you are in your time zone. How closely it misses your zenith depends on how far north or south you are. It passes right through your zenith if you're at latitude 39° north (Washington DC, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Lake Tahoe). How closely can you judge this just by looking?

Monday, August 7

• Full Moon (exact at 2:11 p.m. EDT). The Moon rises around sunset. Once it's dark, can you see through the moonlight that it's in dim Capricornus? That's about where the full Moon at this time of year always resides.

• A shallow partial eclipse of the Moon is visible tonight from eastern Europe, most of Africa and Asia, and Australia. See August 7th’s Partial Lunar Eclipse. By no coincidence, we're two weeks — half a lunar orbit — from the total eclipse of the Sun on August 21st.

Tuesday, August 8

• The Big Dipper hangs diagonally in the northwest after dusk. From its midpoint, look to the right to find Polaris (not very bright) glimmering due north as always.

Polaris is the handle-end of the Little Dipper. The only other parts of the Little Dipper that are even modestly bright — especially through the moonlight! — are the two stars forming the outer end of its bowl. On August evenings you'll find them to Polaris's upper left, by about a fist and a half at arm's length. They're called the Guardians of the Pole, since they circle around Polaris throughout the night and throughout the year.

Wednesday, August 9

• The waning gibbous Moon rises in the east at about the end of twilight. Look to its upper left for the Great Square of Pegasus, balancing on one corner.

Thursday, August 10

• The W of Cassiopeia, tilted only a little, is nicely up in the northeast these evenings. Its right-hand side is the brightest. Watch it rise higher and tilt further through the night and through the next few months.

Friday, August 11

• The Perseid meteor shower should be at its maximum late tonight and late tomorrow night for the Northern Hemisphere. The waning gibbous Moon will rise and light the sky starting in mid-evening, but the brightest meteors will still shine through. You may see one every couple minutes on average, depending on the brightness and clarity of your sky.

And no, this will not be the greatest Perseid shower in history. When your well-meaning relatives forward this viral revelation to you, please ask them not to make fools of themselves by believing every crazy thing on the internet. "Yes, there are ways to learn how."

Live all-sky camera streaming from the Virtual Telescope project; starts at 20:50 August 12th UT.

Live ZHR activity curve as observers around the world report their counts to the International Meteor Organization.

Saturday, August 12

• The Perseids continue tonight, and the Moon rises a little later in the evening and shines a bit less brightly. This might end up the better night.

• The brightest star high in the southeast right after dark is Altair, with little orange Tarazed above it by a finger-with at arm's length.

A little more than a fist-width to Altair's left is delicate Delphinus, the Dolphin, leaping leftward.

Above Altair, slightly less far, is smaller, fainter Sagitta, the Arrow. It too is pointing left.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Venus has entered the feet of Gemini. This week, look for Castor and Pollux to its left and Orion farther to its right.

Mercury is buried deep in the glow of sunset.

Venus (magnitude –4.0) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn, as shown here.

Mars is hidden in the sunrise.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.8, in Virgo) shines low in the west-southwest during dusk. Fainter Spica (magnitude +1.0) twinkles 6° or 7° left of it. Jupiter, a little lower every week, is swinging toward the far side of the Sun from us.

Saturn (magnitude +0.3, in the legs of Ophiuchus) glows steadily in the south at dusk. Fiery Antares, less bright, twinkles 12° to Saturn's lower right.

Uranus (magnitude 5.8, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) are well up in the southeast sky in the hours before dawn. Finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics. Science and critical thinking are no political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, August 4 – 12 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Venus is crossing Gemini this week. After a morning of Perseid-watching, how many of Gemini's stars can you see as you pack up in the beginnings of dawn?

Friday, August 11

• The Perseid meteor shower, visible from the Northern Hemisphere, should be at its maximum late tonight and late Saturday night. The waning gibbous Moon will light the sky starting in mid-evening, but the brightest meteors will still shine through. You may see one every couple minutes on average, depending on the brightness and clarity of your sky. See article, The Perseids: Big Eclipse’s Opening Act.

And no, this will not be the greatest Perseid shower in history. When your well-meaning relatives forward you that viral revelation, please ask them not to make fools of themselves by believing every crazy thing on the internet. "Yes, there are ways to learn how."

Here will be all-sky-camera live streaming from the Virtual Telescope project; starts at 20:00 August 12th UT.

Live ZHR activity curve as observers around the world report their counts to the International Meteor Organization.

Saturday, August 12

• The Perseids continue tonight — and the Moon rises a little later in the evening and shines a bit less brightly. This might end up being the better night.

• The brightest star high in the southeast right after dark is Altair, with little orange Tarazed above it by a finger-width at arm's length.

A little more than a fist-width to Altair's left is delicate Delphinus, the Dolphin, leaping leftward.

Above Altair, slightly less far, is smaller, fainter Sagitta, the Arrow. It too is pointing left.

Sunday, August 13

• The Perseids are tapering down.

• Bright Vega passes closest to overhead around 10 p.m., depending on how far east or west you are in your time zone. How closely it misses your zenith depends on how far north or south you are. It passes right through your zenith if you're at latitude 39° north (Washington DC, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Lake Tahoe). How closely can you judge this just by looking?

On the morning of the 16th, Venus shines with Aldebaran high above Orion.

Monday, August 14

• Last quarter Moon (exact at 9:15 p.m. EDT). The Moon rises around midnight. Once it's well up, you'll find the Pleiades to its upper left and Aldebaran a similar distance to its lower left, as shown here (for North America).

Tuesday, August 15

• In early dawn Wednesday morning the 16th, look east for the waning Moon near Aldebaran, as shown here. Below them is Orion, with his three-star belt nearly vertical.

Wednesday, August 16

• The two brightest stars of summer are Vega, overhead soon after dark, and Arcturus, shining in the west. Vega is a white-hot, type-A star 25 light-years away. Arcturus is a yellow-orange-hot, type-K giant 37 light-years distant. Their color difference is clear to the unaided eye.

Thursday, August 17

• The W of Cassiopeia, tilting a little, is nicely up in the northeast these evenings. Its upper, right-hand side is the brightest. Watch it rise higher and tilt further through the night and through the next few months.

The waning Moon passes Venus in the dawn.

• In early dawn Friday morning the 18th, the waning crescent Moon hangs in the east with bright Venus to its lower left, as shown here. Look left or upper left of Venus for Pollux and Castor.

Friday, August 18

• In early dawn Saturday morning the 19th, the waning Moon is under Venus low in the east, as shown here. Pollux and Castor are still to Venus's left or upper left.

Saturday, August 19

• August is prime Milky Way time, and the evening sky is now moonless. After dark, the Milky Way runs from Sagittarius in the south, up and left across Aquila and through the big Summer Triangle very high in the east, and on down through Cassiopeia to Perseus rising low in the north-northeast.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury and Mars are hidden in the glare of the Sun.

Venus (magnitude –4.0) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn, in Gemini. Look for Pollux and Castor to its left, and orange Betelgeuse much farther to its right or upper right.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.8, in Virgo) is very low in the west-southwest during twilight. Look for fainter Spica (magnitude +1.0) 6° left of it; binoculars help.

Saturn (magnitude +0.3, in the legs of Ophiuchus) glows in the south at dusk. Antares, less bright, twinkles 13° to Saturn's lower right.

Uranus (magnitude 5.8, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) are well up in the southeast in the hours before dawn. Finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve when challenged by antibiotics. Science and critical thinking are no political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, August 11 – 19 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The waning Moon thins in the dawn as it heads down toward our line of sight to the Sun . . .

Friday, August 18

• As dawn begins to break on Saturday morning the 19th, look for the waning Moon hanging under Venus low in the east, as shown here. Find Pollux and Castor, much fainter, to Venus's left or upper left.

Saturday, August 19

• August is prime Milky Way time, and the dark night is now moonless. After dark the Milky Way runs from Sagittarius in the south, up and left across Aquila and through the big Summer Triangle very high in the east, and on down through Cassiopeia to Perseus rising low in the north-northeast.

Sunday, August 20

• With the Moon obviously out of the night sky getting ready for tomorrow's command performance, this would be a fine evening to look far away from the Sun into the Cygnus Milky Way, high overhead. Hunt out the telescopic deep-sky sights there that Sue French highlights in the August Sky & Telescope, page 54, with finder charts, photo, and eyepiece sketches.

. . . which it crosses when new on Monday . . .

Monday, August 21

• In case you didn't hear, there's an eclipse of the Sun today. Not in the path of totality? You'll get a partial eclipse from anywhere in North or Central America, the Caribbean, and northern South America. Here are all our eclipse topics, including how to take photographs. Shortcut to NASA's clickable map to get your local timetable.

• If a solar eclipse is happening, you know it's new Moon today.

Tuesday, August 22

• After dusk as August nears its end, the Great Square of Pegasus looms up in the east, balancing on one corner. Its stars are only 2nd and 3rd magnitude. Extending leftward from the Square's left corner is the main line of the constellation Andromeda, made of stars about the same brightness.

This whole giant pattern was named "the Andromegasus Dipper" by the late Sky & Telescope columnist George Lovi. Shaped somewhat like a giant Little Dipper, it currently scoops upward.

Wednesday, August 23

• The actual Little Dipper, meanwhile, is tipping over leftward in the north. It's only 40% as long as the Andromegasus Dipper, and most of it is much fainter. As always, it's rotated about 90° counterclockwise from Andromegasus.

. . . and then the Moon reappears in the evening sky as a waxing crescent, retreating farther from our sunward line of sight every day. (The Moon here is positioned for the middle of North America; your aspect may vary a bit.)

Thursday, August 24

• After causing so much fuss on Monday, the Moon now gleams shyly low in the west after sunset, as shown here. Almost a fist-width to its left is Jupiter, and fainter Spica is farther left or lower left.

Friday, August 25

• Look low in the west in twilight for the waxing crescent Moon. It forms a triangle with Jupiter and Spica below it, as shown here.

• In the early dawn of Saturday the 26th, Venus forms a straight line with Castor and Pollux above it or to its upper left.

Saturday, August 26

• The thickening crescent Moon, no longer so shy now, points its round side down nearly toward Jupiter low in twilight.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Saturn on June 12, 2017, captured by the crack June 2017 Pic du Midi planetary imaging team using the observatory's historic 1-meter f/17 reflector. Processed by Damian Peach. North is up.

The team also captured Uranus the same night, with white in its southern hemisphere. North is up.

Mercury is hidden in the glare of the Sun.

Venus (magnitude –3.9) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn. Look for Pollux and Castor, much fainter, to its upper left. They form a gently curving arc with Venus that straightens out during the course of the week. The arc becomes a straight line on the morning of the 26th.

Earth, best visible in the daytime, is centered below you. Its disk is a remarkable 180° in apparent diameter, 20,000 times larger than Jupiter: the planet currently in second place in this regard. But local details usually complicate the limb, and perspective effects limit how much of the planet is visible at once. A telescope is not required.

Mars is hidden deep in the glow of sunrise.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.8, in Virgo) is very low in the west-southwest during twilight. Look for fainter Spica (magnitude +1.0) 5° left or lower left of it. Binoculars help.

Saturn (magnitude +0.4, in the legs of Ophiuchus) glows steadily in the south-southwest at nightfall. Antares, less bright, twinkles 12° to Saturn's lower right.

Uranus (magnitude 5.8, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) are in the southeastern sky in the early hours of the morning. Finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve when challenged by antibiotics. Science and critical thinking are no political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, August 18 – 26 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Post-eclipse, the Moon is back in the evening sky as a waxing crescent, retreating farther from our sunward line of sight.

Waxing further, the Moon passes over Scorpius and Saturn.

Jupiter is getting harder to see low in the afterglow of sunset.

Using binoculars, try for little Mars, super-faint Mercury, and Regulus very low under Venus as dawn grows bright.

Friday, August 25

• Look low in the west in twilight for the waxing crescent Moon, innocently sidling away from its blackout of the Sun four days ago. It forms a triangle with Jupiter and Spica, both of them below it, as shown here.

• In the early dawn of Saturday the 26th, spot Venus very low in the east. This morning it forms a straight line with Castor and Pollux, above it or to its upper left.

Saturday, August 26

• The thickening crescent Moon, no longer so shy, points its round side down nearly toward Jupiter low in twilight, as shown here.

Sunday, August 27

• Look for bright Vega passing the zenith as twilight fades away this week, if you live in the world's mid-northern latitudes. Vega goes right through your zenith if you're at latitude 39° north (near Baltimore, Kansas City, Lake Tahoe, Sendai, Beijing, Athens, Lisbon).

Monday, August 28

• The Moon this evening, barely short of first quarter, forms a wide triangle with Saturn to its right and Antares twinkling below the midpoint between them.

Tuesday, August 29

• First-quarter Moon (exact at 4:13 a.m. EDT on this date). By evening, can you see that the Moon is just a trace more than half lit? After dark it forms a triangle with Saturn to its left and Antares a greater distance below it.

Wednesday, August 30

• Now the Moon forms a diagonal line with Saturn and Antares to its lower right. Antares appears about three times as far from the Moon as Saturn does, as shown here.

Thursday, August 31

• The wide W pattern of Cassiopeia is tilting up in the northeast after dark. Look below the W's last segment on the lower left, by a little farther than the segment's length, for an enhanced spot of the Milky Way's glow if you have a dark enough sky. Binoculars will show this to be the Perseus Double Cluster — even through a fair amount of light pollution.

• Venus and the Beehive: Just before the first light of dawn on Friday morning (in other words, about 90 minutes before your local sunrise), spot Venus shining brightly low in the east-northeast. Binoculars will show the Beehive star cluster only about 1° to its left.

Friday, Sept. 1

• At nightfall, the waxing gibbous Moon is about equally distant from Saturn, well off to its right, and Altair, high to its upper left.

• A dawn challenge: As morning twilight brightens tomorrow (Saturday September 2nd), use binoculars to look for the triangle of Mars, Regulus, and Mercury very low in the east, far beneath Venus, as shown below. The three are only magnitudes 1.8, 1.4, and a really challenging 3.2, respectively. And that's before atmospheric extinction. Good luck!

Saturday, Sept. 2

• As twilight fades away into night, look far above the Moon for Altair. Much closer above the Moon (more or less), binoculars will show the wide double stars Alpha and Beta Capricorni. Alpha is the yellow-orange pair on top. The Beta pair is more unequal and probably harder to resolve.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Saturn on June 12, 2017, captured by the crack June 2017 Pic du Midi planetary imaging team using the observatory's historic 1-meter f/17 reflector. Processed by Damian Peach. North is up.

The team also captured Uranus the same night, with white in its southern hemisphere. North is up.

Mercury is very deep in the sunrise, and very faint to boot, as shown above.

Venus (magnitude –3.9) shines in the east before and during dawn. Look for Pollux and Castor, much fainter, above it. Look for Procyon to its right. The triangle that Venus makes with Pollux and Procyon changes each morning.

Mars (magnitude +1.8) is also faint and very deep in the sunrise.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.7, in Virgo) is very low in the west-southwest during twilight. Look for fainter Spica (magnitude +1.0) 4° lower left of it; binoculars help.

Saturn (magnitude +0.4, in the legs of Ophiuchus) glows steadily in the south-southwest at nightfall. Antares, less bright, twinkles 12° to Saturn's lower right.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are well up in the east and southeast, respectively, by late evening. Inside them it likely rains diamonds. Use our finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve when challenged by antibiotics. Science and critical thinking are no political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, August 25 – September 2 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Jupiter is getting harder to see low in the afterglow of sunset.

Using binoculars, try for little Mars, super-faint Mercury, and Regulus very low under Venus as dawn grows bright on the 2nd. They'll move around from day to day this week, and Mercury will brighten.

By the 9th, Mercury has moved up past Mars to pair with Regulus. The visibility of faint objects in bright twilight is exaggerated in these scenes.

Friday, September 1

• At nightfall, the waxing gibbous Moon is about equally distant from Saturn, well off to its right, and Altair, high to its upper left.

• Near-Earth Asteroid Florence. The 4.4-kilometer asteroid 3122 Florence is passing Earth today at a very safe distance of 7 million km. It will remain about 9th magnitude in fine evening view for small telescopes for several days more. See our article, Asteroid Florence Pays Earth a Visit, with 9th-magnitude finder charts. The asteroid is traveling northward by nearly 10° per day, or 24 arcseconds per minute of time. That's fast enough to see fairly readily, especially when the asteroid is passing close to a background star. Watch for a change in the shape of the pattern it makes with the stars nearest to it.

• A dawn challenge: As morning twilight brightens tomorrow (Saturday September 2nd), use binoculars to look for the triangle of Mars, Regulus, and Mercury very low in the east, far beneath Venus, as shown below. The three are only magnitudes 1.8, 1.4, and a really challenging 3.2, respectively. And that's before atmospheric extinction. Good luck!

Saturday, September 2

• As twilight fades away into night, look far above the Moon for Altair. Much closer above the Moon (more or less), binoculars will show the wide double stars Alpha and Beta Capricorni. Alpha is the yellow-orange pair on top. The Beta pair below it is more unequal and probably harder to resolve.

Sunday, September 3

• Look for bright Vega passing the zenith as twilight fades, if you live in the world's mid-northern latitudes. Vega goes right through your zenith if you're at latitude 39° north (near Baltimore, Kansas City, Lake Tahoe, Sendai, Beijing, Athens, Lisbon).

• As dawn becomes bright on Monday through Wednesday mornings September 4th through 6th, Mars glimmers less than 1° from Regulus very low in the east. Mercury is now about 3° right or upper right of the pair.

Monday, September 4

• As evening grows late, keep watch for 1st-magnitude Fomalhaut to rise about 20° below the nearly full Moon. That's about two fists at arm's length.

Tuesday, September 5

• Full Moon tonight (exactly full at 3:03 a.m. on the 6th EDT). After dark this evening, look for the Great Square of Pegasus balancing on one corner far to the Moon's upper left. Its upper-right side points down toward the Moon. Overhead, Deneb is taking over the role of zenith star from brighter Vega (as seen from mid-northern latitudes).

Wednesday, September 6

• How soon after sunset can you see the big Summer Triangle? Face east. Vega, the Triangle's brightest star, is nearly at the zenith (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes). Deneb is the first bright star to Vega's east-northeast. Altair shines less high in the southeast.

Thursday, September 7

• A winter preview: Step out before the first light of dawn this week, and the sky displays the same starry panorama as it does after dinnertime in late January. Orion is striding up in the southeast, with Aldebaran and then the Pleiades high above it. Sirius and Canis Major sparkle below Orion. The Gemini twins are lying on their sides well up in the east.

Friday, September 8

• A dawn challenge: Very low in the east as dawn brightens on Saturday morning the 9th, Mercury, now a respectable magnitude 0, glows 1° to the right of Regulus, magnitude 1.3. Mars, fainter at magnitude 1.8, is about 3° to their lower left, as shown above. Bring binoculars.

Saturday, September 9

• The changes deep in the eastern dawn continue. On Sunday morning the 10th, Mercury glows 1° or less to the lower right of Regulus, while Mars remains below.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Saturn on June 12, 2017, captured by the crack June 2017 Pic du Midi planetary imaging team using the observatory's historic 1-meter f/17 reflector. Processed by Damian Peach. North is up.

The team also captured Uranus the same night, with white in its southern hemisphere. North is up.

Mercury, brightening rapidly from magnitude 3 to 0 this week, and Mars, magnitude 1.8, are passing each other very low in the glow of sunrise, well to the lower left of Venus. Regulus is also down there with them, as shown in sky scenes above. Use binoculars.

Venus (magnitude –3.9, in Cancer) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn. Look for Pollux and Castor, much fainter, high above it. Look for Procyon to Venus's upper right, and bright Sirius farther to the right or lower right of Procyon.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.7, in Virgo) is just above the west horizon during twilight and quickly sets. Much fainter Spica is 3° or 4° to its lower left. Again, bring those binoculars.

Saturn (magnitude +0.4, in Ophiuchus above Scorpius) glows in the south-southwest at dusk. Antares, less bright, twinkles 13° to Saturn's lower right.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are well up in the east and southeast, respectively, by late evening. It likely rains diamonds inside them. Use our finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, or GMT) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Vaccines save lives. Bacteria evolve when challenged by antibiotics. Science and critical thinking are not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, September 1 – 9 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Mercury pairs up with Regulus this morning and the next. The visibility of faint objects in bright twilight is exaggerated here.

On the morning of Tuesday the 12th, the last-quarter Moon occults Aldebaran before sunrise for parts of western North America, and after sunrise in eastern and central parts of the continent. (The Moon in these scenes is always drawn three times its actual apparent size.)

By the Saturday morning the 16th, brightening Mercury and still-faint Mars are almost kissing-close low in the east before dawn . . .

. . . and again the next morning. The Moon and Venus point the way!

Friday, September 8

• A dawn challenge: Very low in the east as dawn brightens on Saturday morning September 9th, Mercury, now a respectable magnitude 0, glows 1° to the right of Regulus, magnitude 1.3, under bright Venus as shown here. Mars, fainter at magnitude 1.8, is about 3° farther lower left. Bring binoculars.

Saturday, September 9

• The changes deep in the eastern dawn continue. On Sunday morning the 10th, Mercury glows 1° or less to the lower right of Regulus, while Mars remains below.

Sunday, September 10

• As dusk turns to night, Arcturus twinkles due west. It's getting lower every week. Off to its right in the northwest, the Big Dipper is turning more and more level.

Monday, September 11

• Tomorrow morning the 12th, the last-quarter Moon approaches Aldebaran and then occults it for much of North America: before or during dawn in the West, and after sunrise in a (hopefully) blue sky farther east. The star disappears on the Moon's bright limb (as shown here) and reappears from behind the dark limb. See the September Sky & Telescope, page 50. Map and timetables.

Tuesday, September 12

• The Great Square of Pegasus is high in the east after dark, balancing on one corner. From the  Square's left corner extends a big line of three 2nd-magnitude stars running to the lower left. They mark the head, backbone and leg of the constellation Andromeda. (The line of three includes the Square's corner.) Upper left from the end of this line, you'll find W-shaped Cassiopeia tilting up.

Wednesday, September 13

• Vega now passes the zenith an hour after sunset, in late twilight, for those of us at mid-northern latitudes. Vega is bigger, hotter, and more luminous than our Sun, but at 25 light-years it's 1,600,000 times farther away.

Thursday, September 14

• Saturn is at eastern quadrature: 90° east of the Sun in the evening sky. So this month, telescope users see the shadow of Saturn's globe falling farthest eastward onto the rings behind it, enhancing Saturn's overall 3-D appearance.

Friday, September 15

• This evening Saturn's biggest and brightest moon, Titan, stands about four ring-lengths to Saturn's east. A 4-inch telescope will begin to show the orange color of its smoggy atmosphere.

• Before sunrise on Sunday morning the 16th, Mercury is only about 0.3° from dimmer Mars. Bring optical aid to scan very low in the east, lower left of Venus, as shown here.

Saturday, September 16

• On Sunday morning the 17th, The Moon and Venus point diagonally down toward Mercury and Mars, which appear nearly as close together as they did on Saturday morning.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive).

And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Saturn on June 12, 2017, captured by the crack June 2017 Pic du Midi planetary imaging team using the observatory's historic 1-meter f/17 reflector. Processed by Damian Peach. North is up.

The team also captured Uranus the same night, with white in its southern hemisphere. North is up.

Mercury is having a good apparition low in the dawn. Its brightness more than doubles this week, from magnitude +0.2 to –0.8. On the morning of September 10th Mercury is closely passing Regulus, which is much fainter at magnitude +1.4. On the 16th it's going even closer by Mars, magnitude +1.8. Look for this action down to the lower left of brilliant Venus. Bring binoculars.

Venus (magnitude –3.9, in Leo above Mercury and Mars) shines brightly in the east before and during dawn.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.7) is just above the west-southwest horizon after sunset. Look early with binoculars; it sets before twilight is over.

Saturn (magnitude +0.4, in Ophiuchus above Scorpius) glows in the south-southwest at dusk. Antares, less bright, twinkles 13° to Saturn's lower right.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are well up in the east and southeast, respectively, by late evening. It likely rains diamonds inside them. Use our finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Vaccines save lives. Bacteria evolve when challenged by antibiotics. Science and critical thinking are not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, September 8 – 16 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Friday, September 15

• This evening Saturn's biggest and brightest moon, Titan, glimmers about four ring-lengths to Saturn's east. A 3-inch telescope can pick it up. A 4-inch will begin to show Titan's orange color, caused by its smoggy atmosphere.

Can you see more moons around Saturn? Identify them at any time and date with our Saturn's Moons tool or iPhone app.

Brightening Mercury and faint Mars are almost kissing-close low in the east before dawn on Saturday morning the 16th . . .

. . . and again the next morning. The Moon and Venus show the way.

Now the thin Moon poses between the two pairs of points . . .

. . . and the next morning, Venus and Regulus pair up. Regulus is less than 1% as bright as the supposed "Morning Star."

• Before sunrise on Sunday morning September 16th, Mercury is only about 0.3° from dimmer Mars, as shown at right. Bring optical aid to scan for them very low in the east, 11° lower left of Venus. Along the way you'll hit Regulus, just a bit brighter than Mars.

Saturday, September 16

• On Sunday morning the 17th, the Moon and Venus point diagonally down toward Mercury and Mars, which appear nearly as close together as they did on Saturday morning. And look for Regulus, a bit brighter than Mars, 4° or 5° below Venus.

Sunday, September 17

• As dusk turns to night, Arcturus twinkles due west. It's getting lower every week. Off to its right in the northwest, the Big Dipper is turning more and more level.

• In early dawn Monday morning the 18th, Venus, Regulus, the hair-thin waning crescent Moon, faint Mars, and Mercury form a nearly vertical line low in the east, in that order from top to bottom, as shown below. The line is about 12° tall. Bring binoculars.

Monday, September 18

• Less than 1° separates brilliant Venus and tiny Regulus as dawn brightens Tuesday and Wednesday mornings September 19th and 20th. Look low in the east, and bring those binoculars.

Tuesday, September 19

• The Great Square of Pegasus is high in the east after dark, balancing on one corner.

From the Great Square's left corner extends a big line of three 2nd-magnitude stars, running to the lower left, that mark the head, backbone and bright leg of the constellation Andromeda. (The line of three includes the Square's left corner, her head.) Upper left from the foot of this line, you'll find W-shaped Cassiopeia tilting up.

Wednesday, September 20

• New Moon (exact at 1:30 a.m. on the 20th EDT).

• With the Moon out of the sky, try for the big, elongated, 10.4-magnitude galaxy NGC 7331 above the top corner of the Great Square of Pegasus — using Matt Wedel's Binocular Highlight chart and article in the September Sky & Telescope, page 43. Really, binoculars? For a galaxy as faint as 10.4? Says Matt, "I've needed at least 10×50s to pull it out, and 15×70s are better still. Some claim to have spotted it with only 7×50s in only moderately dark skies."

For users of big telescopes under darker skies, NGC 7331 is also known as the stepping stone to Stephan's Quintet, ½° to the south-southwest.

Thursday, September 21

• As summer ends, the Sagittarius Teapot moves west of due south during evening and tips increasingly far over, as if pouring out the last of summer.

• More deep-sky hunting! M17 in northernmost Sagittarius, the Omega or Swan Nebula (it looks like either shape), is one of the brightest and richest nebulae for amateur telescopes. See Howard Banich's guide to its details, with photos and sketches and charts, on page 57 of the September Sky & Telescope. How much of this can you detect here for yourself?

Friday, September 22

• Spot the thin waxing crescent Moon low in the west-southwest during twilight. Can you see Jupiter about 7° to its lower right? (That 7° is their separation for skywatchers in North America.)

• Equinox: Autumn begins in the Northern Hemisphere, and spring in the Southern Hemisphere, at 4:02 p.m. EDT. This is when the Sun crosses the equator (both Earth's equator and the celestial equator) heading south for the season.

• Coincidentally, every year around when summer turns to fall, Deneb takes over from brighter Vega as the zenith star right around when twilight fades into night (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes).

Saturday, September 23

• Saturn's brightest moon, Titan, now stands about four ring-lengths to Saturn's west. Titan circles Saturn every 16 days, so it takes 8 days to move east-west from one elongation to the other.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive).

And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Saturn on June 12, 2017, captured by the crack June 2017 Pic du Midi planetary imaging team using the observatory's historic 1-meter f/17 reflector. Processed by Damian Peach. North is up.

Mercury is dropping down from a nice apparition low in the dawn. But it is bright, about magnitude –1.0 all week. On Saturday and Sunday mornings the 16th and 17th it appears close to much fainter Mars, magnitude +1.8. After that Mercury drops fast morning by morning, while Mars moves just a bit higher.

Venus, brilliant at magnitude –3.9, shines as the "Morning Star" in the east before and during dawn. It's sinking lower toward Mars day by day. It passes Regulus (hardly brighter than Mars) on the mornings of the 19th and 20th.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.7) is disappearing deep into the sunset. Use binoculars to try for it just above the west-southwest horizon during bright twilight.

Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in Ophiuchus above Scorpius) glows in the south-southwest at dusk. Antares, less bright, twinkles 13° to Saturn's lower right.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are well up in the east and southeast, respectively, by late evening. Use our finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Vaccines save lives. Bacteria evolve when challenged by antibiotics. Science and critical thinking are not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, September 15 – 23 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Friday, September 22

• Low in the west-southwest during twilight, spot the thin waxing crescent Moon. Can you see Jupiter to the lower right of it, by about 7°? (for North America.)

• Equinox: Autumn begins in the Northern Hemisphere, and spring in the Southern Hemisphere, at 4:02 p.m. EDT. This is when the Sun crosses the equator (both Earth's equator and the celestial equator) heading south for the season.

• Coincidentally, every year around when summer turns to autumn, Deneb takes over from brighter Vega as the zenith star after nightfall (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes).

Saturday, September 23

• The starry W of Cassiopeia stands high in the northeast after dark. The right-hand side of the W (the brightest side) is tilted up. Down below it, Perseus is climbing up from the horizon.

• Saturn's brightest moon, Titan, stands about four ring-lengths to Saturn's west this evening. A small telescope will show it; look just after dark while Saturn is still fairly high. Titan circles Saturn every 16 days, so it takes 8 days to move east-west from one elongation to the other.

Sunday, September 24

• This is the time of year when the rich Cygnus Milky Way crosses the zenith in the hour after nightfall is complete (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes). The Milky Way now rises straight up from the southwest horizon, passed overhead, and runs straight down to the northeast.

The waxing Moon steps eastward over Scorpius and Saturn early this week.

By week's end, big macho Venus is closing right in on delicate little Mars, low in the eastern dawn.

Monday, September 25

• As twilight fades and the stars come out, the crescent Moon shines in the southwest. Look below or lower left of it, by about a fist-width at arm's length, for twinkly Antares. A similar distance or a bit more to the Moon's left, Saturn glows steadily.

Tuesday, September 26

• The "star" below or lower left of the Moon this evening is Saturn, 3,800 times farther away: Saturn is currently 85 light-minutes distant, compared to the Moon's 1.3 light-seconds.

Wednesday, September 27

• First-quarter Moon; exact at 10:54 p.m. EDT. Since we're still close to the equinox date, the almost exactly first-quarter Moon stands due south right at sunset. (Think about why!)

Then as night comes on, look to the Moon's lower right for Saturn, and to the Moon's lower left for the Sagittarius Teapot. Depending on where you are, a line lower left from the Moon will go right through the Teapot's centerline from the top of the lid through the center of the base.

Thursday, September 28

• Now the Moon shines above the Teapot's handle at nightfall.

Friday, September 29

• As the stars come out in late twilight, look high above the Moon for Altair. After dark, examine the sky about a fist at arm's length upper left of Altair for dim little Delphinus, the Dolphin. A little less far straight above Altair is smaller, dimmer Sagitta, the Arrow. (Binoculars will help.)

Saturday, September 30

• Arcturus shines in the west these evenings, sinking as twilight fades out. Equally-bright Capella is rising lower in the north-northeast, depending on your latitude. (The farther north you are the higher it will be.) They're both magnitude 0, as bright as Vega high overhead.

By mid- to late evening, Arcturus and Capella shine at identical heights. When will this happen? That depends on both your latitude and longitude.

When it happens, turn around and look low in the south-southeast (well to the lower left of the Moon). There will be 1st-magnitude Fomalhaut at the same height too — if you're at latitude 43° north. Seen from south of that latitude, Fomalhaut will be higher than Capella and Arcturus. Seen from north of there, it will be lower.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive).

And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Saturn on September 17th, imaged remotely in "fair seeing" with the 1-meter Chilescope by Damian Peach and the Chilescope team. Saturn was just past eastern quadrature, so the globe is casting its shadow well to the east of our line of sight onto the rings behind it. (South is up.) Two days earlier, Cassini added itself to Saturn's material forever.

Mercury is disappearing into the glow of sunrise, farther to the lower left of bright Venus and faint Mars every morning.

Venus is the brilliant "Morning Star," (magnitude –3.9) low due east in the dawn. Every day it's sinking down lower toward Mars, and farther away from Regulus above it.

Mars, also low in the dawn, is magnitude +1.8, only 1/200th as bright as Venus. Use binoculars to look for it below or lower left of Venus. Their separation diminishes from 7° on the morning of the 23rd to 3° on the 30th (shown above). They'll pass closely by each other (¼° apart during dawn in the Americas) on October 5th.

Jupiter (magnitude –1.7) is disappearing into the sunset. Use binoculars or a low-power, wide-field scope to try for it just above the west-southwest horizon during bright twilight.

Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in Ophiuchus to the right of Sagittarius) glows in the south-southwest at dusk. Can you still find Antares twinkling 13° to Saturn's lower right? Get your telescope on Saturn early before it goes any lower!

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are well up in the east and southeast, respectively, by mid- to late evening. Use our finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide traps global heat. Vaccines save lives. Bacteria evolve to thwart antibiotics, because evolution. Science and reason are not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, September 22 – 30 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Low in the eastern dawn, big macho Venus is closing in on delicate little Mars.

Closest!

And on down goes Venus.

Friday, September 29

• As the stars come out in late twilight, look high above the Moon for Altair.

Once the sky is dark, examine the sky upper left of Altair for dim little Delphinus, the Dolphin, about a fist at arm's length from it.

A little less far straight above Altair is the smaller, dimmer constellation Sagitta, the Arrow. Binoculars will help.

Saturday, September 30

• Arcturus shines in the west these evenings, sinking as twilight fades away. Equally-bright Capella is rising lower in the north-northeast, depending on your latitude. (The farther north you are the higher it will be.) They're both magnitude 0, as bright as Vega high overhead.

By mid-evening Arcturus and Capella shine at identical heights. When exactly will this happen? That depends on both your latitude and longitude.

When it happens, turn around and look low in the south-southeast (well to the lower left of the Moon tonight). There you'll find 1st-magnitude Fomalhaut at the same height too — if you're at latitude 43° north. Seen from south of that latitude, Fomalhaut will be higher than Capella and Arcturus. Seen from north of there, it will be lower.

Sunday, October 1

• The starry W of Cassiopeia stands high in the northeast after dark. The right-hand side of the W (the brightest side) is tilted up.

Look along the second segment of the W counting down from the top. It's not quite horizontal. Notice the dim naked-eye star partway along that segment. That's Eta Cassiopeiae, magnitude 3.4, a Sun-like star just 19 light-years away with an orange-dwarf companion. It's a lovely binary pair in a telescope, with an easy separation of 20 arcseconds.

Left of Eta Cas along the segment is a fainter, much wider pair: Upsilon¹ and Upsilon² Cassiopeiae, separation 0.3° (1,200 arcseconds). This pair consists of two orange giants, and they're unrelated to each other; they're 200 and 400 light-years from us.

Monday, October 2

• After dark, look low above the northeast horizon — far below Cassiopeia — for bright Capella on the rise. How high you'll find it depends on your latitude. The farther north you are, the higher it will be.

Tuesday, October 3

• Vega is the brightest star very high in the west at nightfall. Arcturus, equally bright, is getting low in the west-northwest. The brightest star in the vast expanse between them, about a third of the way from Arcturus up toward Vega, is Alphecca, magnitude 2.2 — the crown jewel of Corona Borealis. Alphecca is a 17-day eclipsing binary, but its brightness dips are too slight for the eye to see reliably.

Wednesday, October 4

• Venus and Mars are in conjunction in early dawn tomorrow, forming a tight pair; they're only about ¼° apart during dawn for the Americas. Look low in the east. Binoculars or a low-power telescope will help separate the dazzle of Venus from the dimmer lights of Mars (magnitude 1.8) and nearby Sigma Leonis (even fainter at magnitude 4.0, not shown on the scenes here).

Thursday, October 5

• Full Moon (exactly full at 2:40 p.m. EDT). The Moon rises due east around sunset. After dark, as the Moon gains height, look above it for the Great Square of Pegasus balancing on one corner.

Friday, October 6

• The Moon, just past full, rises in the east in late twilight. As night arrives, look for the two brightest stars of Aries to the Moon's upper left by about a fist and a half at arm's length. The stars are 4° apart (less than half a fist) and lined up almost horizontally. Can you see that the brighter one — Hamal, on the left — has an orange tint?

Saturday, October 7

• The Great Square of Pegasus balances on its corner high in the east at nightfall. For your location, when it is exactly balanced? That is, when it the Square's top corner exactly above its bottom corner? It'll be sometime after the end of twilight, depending on both your latitude and longitude. Try lining them up with the vertical edge of a building for improved precision.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Can you still spot Antares twinkling to the lower right of Saturn this week? They're 14° apart, almost a fist and a half at arm's length.

Mercury is hidden behind the glare of the Sun.

Venus is the brilliant "Morning Star," (magnitude –3.9) low due east in the dawn. This week it sinks down past faint Mars, magnitude +1.8, only 1/200 as bright. They appear closest together on the morning of October 5th, as shown in the panels above (drawn for North America).

Whenever Mars appears anywhere near Venus, it seems to get scared and fade. That's because Venus is never seen far from our line of sight to the Sun. Whenever Mars is anywhere near our line of sight to the Sun, it has to be on the far side of its orbit from us: about as far and faint as it gets.

Jupiter has disappeared into the sunset.

Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in Ophiuchus to the right of Sagittarius) glows low in the southwest at nightfall, as shown here. It soon sinks lower and sets.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are up in the east and southeast, respectively, by mid- to late evening. Use our finder charts.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide traps global heat. Vaccines save lives. Bacteria evolve to thwart antibiotics, because evolution. Science and reason are not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and our willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, September 29 – October 7 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Can you still spot Antares twinkling to the lower right of Saturn this week? They're 14° apart, almost a fist and a half at arm's length.

On the morning of October 7th, two days after their conjunction, Venus and Mars are still just 1.1° apart.

After occulting Regulus on the morning of the 15th, the waning crescent Moon descends day by day toward Mars and Venus. These scenes are drawn exact for the middle of North America. For clarity, the Moon is always shown three times its actual apparent size.

Friday, October 6

• The Moon, just past full, rises in the east in late twilight. As night arrives, look for the two brightest stars of Aries to the Moon's upper left by about a fist and a half at arm's length. The stars are 4° apart (less than half a fist) and lined up almost horizontally. Can you see that the brighter one — Hamal, on the left — has an orange tint?

Saturday, October 7

• The Great Square of Pegasus balances on its corner high in the east at nightfall. For your location, when it is exactly balanced? That is, when it the Square's top corner exactly above its bottom corner? It'll be sometime after the end of twilight, depending on both your latitude and longitude. Try lining up the stars with the vertical edge of a building.

Sunday, October 8

• The starry W of Cassiopeia stands high in the northeast after dark. The right-hand side of the W (the brightest side) is tilted up.

Look along the second segment of the W counting down from the top. Notice the dimmer naked-eye star partway along that segment. That's Eta Cassiopeiae, magnitude 3.4, a Sun-like star just 19 light-years away with an orange-dwarf companion. It's a lovely binary pair in a telescope, with an easy separation of 20 arcseconds.

Left of Eta Cas along the segment is a fainter, much wider pair: Upsilon¹ and Upsilon² Cassiopeiae, separation 0.3° (1,200 arcseconds). This pair consists of two orange giants, and they're unrelated to each other; they're 200 and 400 light-years from us.

See also October 12 below.

• The waning gibbous Moon rises in midevening with the Pleiades to its upper left and Aldebaran and the Hyades to its lower left.

Monday, October 9

• As the last of twilight fades away, look above the northeast horizon — far below Cassiopeia — for bright Capella on the rise. How high you'll find it depends on your latitude. The farther north you are, the higher it will be.

Tuesday, October 10

• Sometime around when nightfall is complete, you'll find zero-magnitude Arcturus low in the west-northwest at the same height as zero-magnitude Capella in the northeast. When this happens, turn to the south-southeast, and there will be 1st-magnitude Fomalhaut at the same height too — if you're at latitude 43° north. Seen from south of that latitude Fomalhaut will appear higher; from north of there it will be lower.

Wednesday, October 11

• The last-quarter Moon rises around 11 or midnight tonight, depending on your location. Once the Moon is well up you'll see that it's in Gemini, with Castor and Pollux shining to its left. Farther to its right you'll get an early look at Orion — your first of the season?

Thursday, October 12

• After dark, spot the W of Cassiopeia high in the northeast, it's standing almost on end. The third segment of the W, counting from the top, points almost straight down. Extend it twice as far down as its own length, and you're at the Double Cluster in Perseus. This pair of star-swarms is dimly apparent to the unaided eye in a dark sky (use averted vision), and it's visible from almost anywhere in binoculars. It's lovely in telescopes.

Friday, October 13

• Now that we're in mid-October, Deneb has replaced Vega as the zenith star soon after nightfall (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes) — and, accordingly, Capricornus has replaced Sagittarius as the most notable constellation low in the south.

Saturday, October 14

• Vega is the brightest star in the west these evenings. Less high in the southwest is Altair, not quite as bright. Just upper right of Altair, by a finger-width at arm's length, is little orange Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae). Straight down from Tarazed runs the stick-figure backbone of Aquila, the Eagle.

• Early on Sunday morning the 15th, the bright limb of the waning crescent Moon occults Regulus for telescope users in much of North America. The event happens during dawn for the East and earlier in darkness farther west. The West Coast misses out.

For details see the October Sky & Telescope, page 50. Here's a map and detailed timetables for many locations, including the altitudes of the Moon and Sun at the times of the star's disappearance and reappearance. The reappearance happens up to an hour or more later, from behind the Moon's dark limb.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury is hidden behind the glare of the Sun.

Venus is the bright "Morning Star," (magnitude –3.9) is low due east in the dawn. Just above it is faint Mars, magnitude +1.8, only 1/200 as bright. They were in conjunction on the morning of October 5th and are now drawing apart. On the morning of Saturday the 7th they're 1° apart (at dawn for North America), and by the 14th they're 5° apart. Venus is getting lower, Mars higher.

Why their great brightness difference? Whenever Mars appears anywhere near Venus, it seems to get scared and fade. That's because Venus is never seen far from our line of sight to the Sun. Whenever Mars is anywhere near our line of sight to the Sun, it has to be on the far side of its orbit from us: about as far and faint as it gets.

Jupiter is hidden deep in the glare of sunset.

Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in Ophiuchus to the right of the Sagittarius Teapot) glows low in the southwest at dusk. It soon sinks lower and sets.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are up in the east and southeast, respectively, by mid-evening. Use our finder charts online or in the October Sky & Telescope, page 50.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Carbon dioxide traps global heat. Vaccines save lives. Bacteria evolve to thwart antibiotics, because evolution. Science and reason are not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and our willingness, to do so."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

. . . Because "Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, October 6 – 14 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

The waning crescent Moon occults Regulus for most of the US on the morning of the 15th (see the entry for the 14th at left). Then the Moon descends day by day toward Mars and Venus. These scenes are drawn exact for the middle of North America. (In Europe, move each Moon symbol a quarter of the way toward the one for the previous date.) For clarity, the Moon is always shown three times its actual apparent size.

Friday, October 13

• Now that we're in mid-October, Deneb has replaced Vega as the zenith star soon after nightfall (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes). So, accordingly, Capricornus has replaced Sagittarius low in the south.

Saturday, October 14

• Early on Sunday morning the 15th, the bright limb of the waning crescent Moon occults Regulus for telescope users in much of North America. The disappearance happens during dawn for the East and earlier in darkness farther west. The West Coast misses the disappearance; the Moon won't have risen yet.

But then, up to an hour or more later, Regulus reappears from behind the Moon's dark limb. This will be a naked-eye event for much of the USA and southeastern Canada! The reappearance will be "arguably the best lunar occultation of the year for the US, with the Moon only 20% sunlit," writes David Dunham of the International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA). "And for those with telescopes of about 10 inches or larger, it might provide a fleeting opportunity to see Regulus’s elusive, 12th-magnitude white-dwarf companion, discovered in 2005, just before the blazing primary emerges. The only other time that the companion was imaged was during an occultation of Regulus by the asteroid 268 Adorea that Joan and I recorded with a 10-inch 'suitcase' telescope from Papua New Guinea on Oct. 13, 2016."

Here are a map and detailed timetables of the disappearance and reappearance for many locations, including the altitudes of the Moon and Sun at those times. (The page consists of three long tables, not very clearly divided: first the disappearance, then the reappearance, then the locations of cities.)

To record the grazing occultation along the northern limit, writes Dunham, "I believe the best place will be Bemidji, MN, but other places, such as Billings, MT, and Bismarck, ND, will be good too, as well as rural parts of Ontario and Quebec." Details of the graze.

Sunday, October 15

• Vega is the brightest star in the west these evenings. Less high in the southwest is Altair, not quite as bright. Just upper right of Altair, by a finger-width at arm's length, is little orange Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae). Straight down from Tarazed runs the stick-figure backbone of Aquila, the Eagle.

• Algol is at minimum brightness in eclipse, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for about two hours tonight centered on 1:25 a.m. EDT (10:25 p.m. PDT). Algol takes several additional hours to fade and to rebrighten.

Monday, October 16

• The Great Square of Pegasus is now high in the east-southeast after dark, still, for now, balanced on one corner for the world's mid-northern latitudes.

• As dawn brightens on Tuesday morning the 17th, a super-thin waning crescent Moon hangs above Venus and left or lower left of faint Mars, as shown above. Look very low in the east. Binoculars will help.

Tuesday, October 17

• Draw a line from Altair, the brightest star high in the southwest after dark, to the right to Vega, high in the west and even brighter. Continue the line half as far onward, and you hit the Lozenge: the pointy-nosed head of Draco, the Dragon, with orange Eltanin as the tip of his nose.

Wednesday, October 18

• Algol is at minimum light this evening for a couple hours centered on 10:14 p.m. EDT.

Thursday, October 19

• The modest Orionid meteor shower is active for the next few nights in the early-morning hours. The shower's radiant is near Orion's Club, low in the east after midnight and high in the south by the beginning of dawn. The sky will be free of moonlight.

• New Moon (exact at 3:12 p.m. EDT).

Friday, October 20

• Look for Capella sparkling low in the northeast this week. Look for the Pleiades cluster about three fists at arm's length to its right. These harbingers of the cold months to come rise higher as evening grows late.

Upper right of Capella, and upper left of the Pleiades, the stars of Perseus stand astride the Milky Way. Upper left of Perseus is Cassiopeia.

Saturday, October 21

• This is the time of year when the Big Dipper lies down horizontal low in the north-northwest after dark. How low? The farther south you are, the lower. Seen from 40° north (New York, Denver) its bottom stars twinkle nearly ten degrees high, but at Miami (26° N) the entire Dipper skims along out of sight just below the northern horizon.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury and Jupiter are buried deep in the sunset.

Venus (magnitude –3.9) rises around the beginning of dawn and shines very low due east as dawn brightens. Above it is faint Mars, magnitude +1.8, only 1/200 as bright. They're drawing farther apart every day; on the morning of Saturday the 14th they're 5° apart, and by the 21st they're separated by 10°. Venus is getting lower, Mars higher.

Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in Ophiuchus to the right of the Sagittarius Teapot) glows low in the southwest at dusk. It soon sinks away and sets.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are up after dark in the east and southeast, respectively. Use our finder charts online or in the October Sky & Telescope, page 50.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Vaccines save lives. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve to thwart antibiotics, because evolution. Science and reason are not fake, and not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to use them."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, October 13 – 21 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

This week, the big W of Cassiopeia stands almost on end high in the northeast. Below it, binoculars will show the Double Cluster of Perseus.

Friday, October 20

• The modest Orionid meteor shower continues in the early-morning hours for the next couple of nights. The apparent radiant point of the shower is near Orion's Club, low in the east after midnight and high in the south by the beginning of dawn. The morning sky is free of moonlight. See Orionid Meteors Max Out Sunday Morning.

• Look for Capella sparkling low in the northeast after dinnertime this week. Then find the little Pleiades cluster to its right by about three fists at arm's length. They rise higher as evening grows late, harbingers of the cold months to come.

Upper right of Capella, and upper left of the Pleiades, the stars of Perseus stand astride the Milky Way. To the upper left of Perseus, the Milky Way runs through Cassiopeia.

Saturday, October 21

• After dark, spot the W of Cassiopeia high in the northeast. It's standing almost on end. The third segment of the W, counting down from the top, points almost straight down. Extend that segment twice as far down as its own length, and you're at the Double Cluster in Perseus. This pair of star-swarms is dimly apparent to the unaided eye in a dark sky (use averted vision), and it's visible from almost anywhere with binoculars. It's a lovely sight in telescopes.

Newly returned to the evening sky, the waxing crescent Moon passes low Antares (use binoculars!) and then Saturn in the southwestern twilight.

Sunday, October 22

• This is the time of year when the Big Dipper lies down horizontal low in the north-northwest after dark. How low? The farther south you are, the lower. Seen from 40° north (New York, Denver) even its bottom stars twinkle nearly ten degrees high. But at Miami (26° N) the entire Dipper skims along out of sight just below the northern horizon.

Monday, October 23

• Look low in the southwest in late twilight for Saturn glowing about 7° left of the waxing crescent Moon (as seen from North America), as shown here.

Tuesday, October 24

• Now, at dusk, Saturn appears about 6° to the lower right of the thickening Moon, as shown here.

Wednesday, October 25

• The Ghost of Summer Suns. Halloween is approaching, and this means that Arcturus, the star sparkling low in the west-northwest in twilight, is taking on its role as "the Ghost of Summer Suns."

What does this mean? For several days centered on October 25th every year, Arcturus occupies a special place above your local landscape. It closely marks the spot where the Sun stood at the same time, by the clock, during hot June and July — in broad daylight, of course. So, as Halloween approaches every year, you can see Arcturus as the chilly ghost of the departed summer Sun.

Thursday, October 26

• Draw a line from Altair, the brightest star very high above the Moon in the southwest after dark, to the right to brighter Vega, very high in the west. Continue the line half as far onward, and you hit the Lozenge: the pointy-nosed head of Draco, the Dragon. Its brightest star is orange Eltanin, the tip of the Dragon's nose, which points toward Vega.

Friday, October 27

• First-quarter Moon (exactly first-quarter at 6:22 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). At nightfall, you'll find Altair shining about 30° (three fists at arm's length) to the Moon's upper right.

Much closer to the Moon's upper right, by only about 6°, are 3rd-magnitude Alpha and Beta Capricorni. Alpha is the upper one. Can you resolve Alpha into a tiny twin pair with your unaided eyes? Binoculars make it easy — and should also resolve Beta, another wide double, although its components are somewhat closer and very unequal.

Saturday, October 28

• Now Altair appears a little farther to the Moon's upper right after dark. Just upper right of Altair, by a finger-width at arm's length, is orange Tarazed. It looks like Altair's little sidekick, but it's actually a much bigger and brighter star far in the background. Altair is 17 light-years away. Tarazed is about 360 light-years away and 100 times as luminous.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury is hidden in the glare of the Sun.

Venus (magnitude –3.9) rises around the beginning of dawn and shines very low due east as dawn brightens.

Mars (magnitude +1.8, only 1/200 as bright as Venus) is higher in the dawn, to the upper right of Venus and widening. Their separation grows from 10° on October 21st to 14° by the 28th. Venus is slowly getting lower, Mars higher.

Jupiter is out of sight, passing through conjunction behind the Sun.

Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in southern Ophiuchus) glows low in the southwest at dusk.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are well up after dark in the east and southeast, respectively. Use our finder charts online or in the October Sky & Telescope, page 50.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Vaccines save lives. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve to thwart antibiotics, because evolution. Science and reason are not fake, are not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to use them."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, October 20 – 28 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Comet ASASSN1, whose path is plotted in the November Sky & Telescope (page 48), is turning out to be only 9th or 10th magnitude even now at its predicted peak brightness. It's there, but it needs a medium-sized telescope (or supersize binoculars under a really dark sky). Its reported visual magnitudes vary rather widely, depending on sky conditions and the instrument used. Try for it early in the week, after moonset in the early-morning hours.

Faint fuzzy! Robert Beal imaged Comet ASSASN1 (C/2017 O1) on October 18th during the Eldorado Star Party in Eldorado, Texas. "The comet was very tenuous but visible with averted vision using 15x50 image-stabilized binoculars under dark skies," he writes. He used a Panasonic FZ300 superzoom camera (f/2.8, 60 second exposure, ISO 1600, zoomed effective focal length 500mm) mounted on a SkyTracker Pro tracking mount.

Friday, October 27

• First-quarter Moon (exactly first-quarter at 6:22 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). At nightfall you'll find Altair shining about 30° (three fists at arm's length) to the Moon's upper right.

Much closer to the Moon's upper right, by only about 6°, are 3rd-magnitude Alpha and Beta Capricorni. Alpha is the upper one. Can you resolve Alpha into a tiny twin pair with your unaided eyes? Binoculars make it easy — and should also resolve Beta, another wide double, although its components are closer and very unequal.

• Look for Capella sparkling low in the northeast after dinnertime this week. Then find the little Pleiades cluster to its right, by about three fists at arm's length. They rise higher as evening grows late, harbingers of the cold months to come.

Upper right of Capella, and upper left of the Pleiades, the stars of Perseus stand astride the Milky Way. To the upper left of Perseus, the Milky Way runs through Cassiopeia.

Saturday, October 28

• Now Altair appears a little farther to the Moon's upper right after dark. Just upper right of Altair, by a finger-width at arm's length, is orange Tarazed. It looks like Altair's little sidekick, but it's actually a much bigger and brighter star far in the background. Altair is 17 light-years away. Tarazed is about 360 light-years away and 100 times as luminous.

• And hey, it's International Observe the Moon Night!

Sunday, October 29

• Spot Altair high in the southwest soon after dark. Two distinctive little constellations lurk above it: Delphinus the Dolphin, hardly more than a fist at arm's length to Altair's upper left, and fainter Sagitta the Arrow, slightly less far to Altair's upper right. Sky too bright with moonlight? Use binoculars!

All week, bright Venus and faint Mars shine in the east during early dawn. (The blue 10° scale is about a fist-width at arm's length, always a handy measure.)

Monday, October 30

• The Big Dipper lies down horizontal low in the north-northwest after dark.

How low? The farther south you are, the lower. Seen from 40° north (New York, Denver) even its bottom stars twinkle nearly ten degrees high. But at Miami (26° N) the entire Dipper skims along out of sight just below the northern horizon.

Tuesday, October 31

• For this Halloween evening, a bright waxing gibbous Moon shines in the southeast to south. It's lower right of the Great Square of Pegasus at dusk, and directly below it later in the evening. The Great Square is about 15° on a side, somewhat larger than your fist at arm's length.

Wednesday, November 1

• The bright Moon is below the Great Square of Pegasus. Look to the Moon's left by about three fists at arm's length for the two or three brightest stars of Aries, lined up roughly horizontal.

Thursday, November 2

• Vega is the brightest star in the west on November evenings. Its little constellation Lyra extends to its left, pointing in the direction of Altair, the brightest star in the southwest.

Three of Lyra's leading stars, after Vega, are interesting doubles. Barely above Vega is 4th-magnitude Epsilon Lyrae, the Double-Double. Epsilon forms one corner of a roughly equilateral triangle with Vega and Zeta Lyrae. The triangle is less than 2° on a side, hardly the width of your thumb at arm's length. It easily fits in a binocular's field of view.

Binoculars easily resolve Epsilon. And a 4-inch telescope at 100× or more should resolve each of Epsilon's wide components into a tight pair.

Zeta Lyrae is also a double star for binoculars; much tougher, but plainly resolved in any telescope.

Delta Lyrae, upper left of Zeta, is a much wider and easier pair.

Friday, November 3

• Full Moon tonight (exactly full at 1:23 a.m.). The full Moon of November always rides very high in the middle of the night, almost as high as the full Moon of December.

Saturday, November 4

• Look lower left of the bright Moon this evening for Aldebaran. Above Aldebaran are the Pleiades, perhaps not so easy to spot in the moonlight. Bring binoculars.

The bright star much farther to the left is Capella.

• Standard time returns at 2 a.m. Sunday morning for most of North America. Clocks fall back an hour.

________________________

Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury is hidden deep in the afterglow of sunset.

Venus (magnitude –3.9) rises as dawn begins and shines very low due east as dawn brightens.

Mars (magnitude +1.8, in Virgo) is higher in the dawn, well to the upper right of Venus. Their separation grows a bit from 14° on October 28th to 16° by November 4th. Venus is getting lower, Mars higher.

Jupiter is hidden deep in the glow of sunrise.

Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in southern Ophiuchus) glows very low in the southwest at dusk.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are well up after dark in the southeastern side of the sky. Neptune is less than 1° from Lambda Aquarii. Use our finder charts online or in the October Sky & Telescope, page 50.

______________________

All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Vaccines save lives. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve to thwart antibiotics, because evolution. Science and reason are not fake, are not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to use them."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, October 27 – November 4 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

All week, bright Venus and faint Mars shine in the east during early dawn. Venus is getting lower, Mars higher. (The blue 10° scale is about a fist-width at arm's length.)

By the end of the week, Jupiter is creeping up on Venus from below.

Friday, November 3

• Full Moon tonight (exactly full at 1:23 a.m.). The full Moon of November always rides very high across the sky in the middle of the night — almost as high as the full Moon of December.

Saturday, November 4

• Look lower left of the bright Moon this evening for Aldebaran. Above Aldebaran are the Pleiades, perhaps not so easy to spot in the moonlight. Binoculars help.

The bright star much farther to the left is Capella.

• Standard time returns at 2 a.m. Sunday morning for most of North America. Clocks fall back an hour.

Sunday, November 5

• The waning gibbous Moon occults Aldebaran early this evening for much of North America, and later in the night for northern Europe. The star disappears on the Moon's bright limb and reappears from behind the Moon's very thin dark sector — so for the disappearance you'll need a telescope, and for the reappearance, at least binoculars. See the November Sky & Telescope, page 51. Map and timetables.

Monday, November 6

• Around 8 p.m. this week, the Great Square of Pegasus stands in its level position very high toward the south. (It's straight overhead if you're as far south as Miami.) Its right (western) side points very far down toward Fomalhaut. Its eastern side points down less directly toward Beta Ceti, less far down.

Tuesday, November 7

• Algol should be at its minimum brightness, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.3, for a couple hours centered on 10:56 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Wednesday, November 8

• Now that the Moon is out of the sky in early to mid-evening, the big Silver Coin Galaxy, NGC 253 in Sculptor, awaits you. It's 7° south of 2nd-magnitude Beta Ceti (locate this star with Monday's entry above). Seven degrees is a little more than the width of a typical binocular's field of view.

The galaxy is large and diffuse, so a really dark sky is a big help. Under good sky conditions binoculars show it easily. It's "obviously elongated, distinctly brighter in the western half," writes Matt Wedel in his Binocular Highlight column (with chart) in the November Sky & Telescope, page 43.

Thursday, November 9

• The last-quarter Moon rises tonight around 10 or 11 p.m. standard time, in the east-northeast below Pollux and Castor in Gemini. Use them to tell where on the horizon to watch for it!

• Happy 83rd birthday, Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996). If only.

On July 25th, Shahrin Ahmad in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, took a telescopic video of Regulus emerging from behind the Moon's bright limb.

Friday, November 10

• Plan for this now: In broad daylight on Saturday morning the Moon, just past last quarter, occults Regulus for much of North America. You'll need a telescope and very clear air. The star disappears on the Moon's bright limb and reappears from behind the dark limb. See the November Sky & Telescope, page 51. Map and timetables.

• Algol should be at its minimum brightness, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.3, for a couple hours centered on 7:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Saturday, November 11

• Vega is the brightest star in the west in early evening. Its little constellation Lyra extends to the left. Somewhat farther left, by about a fist and a half at arm's length from Vega, is 3rd-magnitude Albireo, the beak of Cygnus. This is one of the finest and most colorful double stars for small telescopes.

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Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy.

The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown above is the Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Larger view. Sample chart.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use sky charts with a telescope.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically (meaning heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."

This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury is buried deep in the afterglow of sunset.

Venus (magnitude –3.9) and Jupiter (magnitude –1.7) rise during dawn, with brighter Venus on top. Jupiter starts the week too low to see at all, but by the morning of November 11th it's just 2° below Venus. They'll be in conjunction, an unusually close 1/3° apart, on the morning of the 13th. Look for them barely above the east-northeast horizon about 45 to 30 minutes before your local sunrise time, and bring binoculars.

Mars (magnitude +1.8, in Virgo) rises around 3 or 4 a.m. standard time and is moderately high in early dawn, well to the upper right of Venus. In a telescope Mars will be just a tiny, fuzzy dot for several months to come, but next summer it will have its closest opposition since 2003.

Saturn (magnitude +0.5, in southern Ophiuchus) glows very low in the southwest at dusk.

Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Pisces) and Neptune (magnitude 7.8, in Aquarius) are well up after dark in the southeastern side of the sky. Neptune is only 0.6° south of Lambda Aquarii. Use our finder charts online or in the October Sky & Telescope, page 50.

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All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time (UT, UTC, GMT, or Z time) minus 4 hours. Eastern Standard Time (EST) is UT minus 5 hours.

______________________

"This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules. Test ideas by experiments and observations. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2014

______________________

"Objective reality exists. Facts are often determinable. Vaccines save lives. Carbon dioxide warms the globe. Bacteria evolve to thwart antibiotics, because evolution. Science and reason are not fake news, not a political conspiracy. They are how we discover reality. Civilization's survival depends on our ability, and willingness, to use them."
— Alan MacRobert, your Sky at a Glance editor

______________________

"Facts are stubborn things."
— John Adams, 1770

The post This Week’s Sky at a Glance, November 3 – 11 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.