Celestial viewing opportunities abound in mid-August. Two free public observing sessions hosted by Kanab’s Stellar Vista Observatory (SVO) are coming your way on August 11 and 12. One occurs in the morning, and the other takes place in the evening. Here’s how to participate.

Consider starting your August 11 work week with the refreshing inspiration of early morning twilight. On this rare occasion, no less than five planets are riding high. But it so happens that none are visible in the evening sky! So catch ‘em in the morning while you can because for most of 2025, it’s the only time when we can see these elusive denizens of our solar system.

Early risers visiting Jackson Flat Reservoir on Monday morning, August 11, from 5:00 am to 6:00 am, will be rewarded with eye-popping views of two unusual planetary conjunctions. A conjunction occurs when two celestial bodies pass extremely close to one another, as viewed from our vantage point on Earth.

In this instance, two bright naked eye visible planets, Jupiter & Venus, will appear to be squeezed right next to each other in the Eastern sky while Saturn and Neptune are positioned side by side in the Western sky. While Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are easily visible without magnification, SVO’s powerful telescopes will enable observation of the far distant gas giants Uranus and Neptune, which, respectively, are 1.85 billion, and 2.72 billion miles away!

Remarkably, all of these planets are soaring above us the early morning hours before sunrise!

Other notable observing targets that SVO’s astronomy interpreters will share through the eyepiece on the morning of August 11 are the widely recognized Pleiades star cluster (also known as the Seven Sisters), the red giant stars Aldebaran and Betelgeuse, the bright yellow star Capella, the Perseus Double Cluster, Andromeda Galaxy, and the waning moon. Sensational!

Sky watching activities also take place on Tuesday evening, August 12, beginning at 9:15 pm, at the same location: Jackson Flat Reservoir boat launch parking area. On that night, SVO will host its evening star party for the month of August to coincide with the Perseids Meteor Shower. In the bright moonlight along with stargazing and lunar observations, if you keep looking up, you might catch a few dazzling meteors streaking across the sky at the incredible speed of 37 miles per second!

Of course the best time to look for meteors is when the shower peaks and the moon is absent, and between the hours of 2 am and 4 am when the radiant (in this case the constellation Perseus) is high in the sky. While all of these conditions will not simultaneously be present, this public event is bound to stimulate wonder. Unexpectedly feeling awestruck in the presence of what is truly infinite is just so much fun!

In other goings-on around the state involving night skies, SVO’s president, Rich Csenge, and secretary, Eric Sims, will be panelists at the the upcoming Tourism Business Development Workshop titled, “Agritourism and Astrotourism”, at the Southern Utah University Alumni Center, also on August 11 and 12. For information, visit: https://travel.utah.gov/workshop/

The nonprofit Stellar Vista Observatory provides observational experiences for people to enjoy, appreciate and comprehend what we can see in southern Utah’s starry night skies. To learn more or donate to the creation of a new public educational astronomical observatory in Kanab, please visit https://stellarvistaobservatory.org/.