John Mosley was Program Supervisor of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles for 27 years and is the author of “Stargazing for Beginners” and “Stargazing with Binoculars and Telescopes”. He and his wife live in St. George where he continues to stargaze from his retirement home while serving on the advisory committee for Stellar Vista Observatory.
The southern half of the sky at Venus-rise on the 29th. The moon and Jupiter are just over 3° apart. The week begins with a wonderful conjunction – and conjunctions are always fun. As the sky is getting dark, look for the nearly-full moon a third of the way up the southwestern sky. On the […]
Image of Copernicus Crater, courtesy NASA Last week all eyes were on the sun. This is a good week to look at the moon. The first thing you’ll see is billions of craters, sights of impacts of asteroids and comets from the sky which blast out huge basins. The craters were formed when comets and […]
This week we’re back to the planets. If you’re up before the sky gets too bright with the approaching dawn you can’t fail to marvel at Venus, the brilliant “morning star” well up in the east. Venus rises 3-1/3 hours before the sun so you can see it against a fully dark sky and then […]
If you are within this band the moon will be silhouetted in front of the sun on the morning of October 14 in an annular eclipse; if you’re near it the eclipse will be nearly total. From https://eclipsophile.com/ase2023/ This week I want to provide basic information about the near-total eclipse coming up in a few […]
This is a negative map of the sky around Uranus; it’s easier to see stars and planets as black dots on a white background. The faintest stars shown are ½ as bright as Uranus. These planets move slowly so the map is useful all month, and the view spans 35°. Graphic created with SkySafariAstronomy.com. Comet […]
The eastern sky 45 minutes before sunrise on September 8th showing the comet, Venus, the moon, and the locations of the constellations. Graphic created with SkySafariAstronomy.com. A comet discovered only last month *might* become bright enough to see with the naked eye this week; in any case you should easily see it with binoculars. Named […]
Saturn had the same orientation (rings tilted 9° from our line of sight) as this year when the Hubble Space Telescope photographed it in 2011. Raw data courtesy NASA STScI, processed image © Ted Stryk. You might see relatively faint Mars only a few degrees above the west horizon a half-hour after sunset, but eyes […]
Since Venus left us a month ago Mars has been the sole planet in the west in the evening sky, and the 18th is probably your last chance to see it until next March. On that night look for the very thin crescent moon, only 6% illuminated, and only 9° above the western horizon 30 […]
Perseid meteors. Credit Rafael Schmall/Universities Space Research Association. Choosing the topic for this week’s Sky Report is simple – the annual Perseid Meteor Shower which peaks on the night of Saturday the 12th and the morning of the 13th – a weekend even! Meteors are bits of dust or rock that came from elsewhere in […]
What happened to Venus? It was reliably there in the evening sky for months, and then it quickly disappeared. This is easier to understand with a diagram than with words alone, so refer to the diagram which is largely self-explanatory. Venus orbits faster than the earth on an inside track, so it catches and passes […]
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