The very best celestial show going on this month is in the low southeast sky about 60 to 90 minutes before sunrise. It’s the Venus, Saturn, and crescent moon conjunction, or what I like to call a celestial hugging. A telescope will help you enjoy the show, but it’s just about as great with the naked eye.
Tomorrow and Tuesday morning look in the very low southeastern sky. If there’s a high tree line in that direction you might have to relocate. A higher hill is always a sure bet. Look for the two brightest stars you can see. They will be oriented diagonally. Venus will be the far brighter of the two to the upper right. Saturn will be just to the lower left.
You might see a third star just about as bright as Saturn to the lower right of the pair. This is actually a star, Antares, one of the brightest stars in the sky and also the brightest shiner in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. Scorpius is one of the prime summer constellations we’ll see much later this year in the evening. About all you can see now of the Scorpion is Antares, marking the heart of the beast, and maybe a few of the stars that make up its claws. You may see that Antares has a ruddy look. It’s a huge red giant star that’s so large that if you put it in our solar system in place of our comparatively smaller sun, the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and maybe even Jupiter would be living inside of Antares. It looks a lot dimmer and brighter in our heavens because it’s about 600 light years away. Just one year is about 6 trillion miles.
On Monday morning Venus and Jupiter will only be separated by five degrees, which is half the width of your fist held at arm’s length. You’ll also see the waning crescent moon just to the upper right of the planetary duo. On Tuesday morning they’ll only be four degrees apart, with the crescent moon a little thinner and closer to the planets. On Wednesday and Thursday morning pray that we have clear skies, because that’s when the even thinner crescent moon will be right next door to the planets that are even closer to one another. You don’t want to miss this. On Wednesday morning the moon will be just to the upper right of the planets and on Thursday it will be just to the left of them. Through a pair of binoculars you should be able to see all three objects in the same field of view.
On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings the moon will be out of the picture but the show is far from being over. The celestial hugging between Venus and Saturn gets even tighter. On Friday morning Saturn and Venus will be separated by only half a degree, which is only the width of a full moon in the sky. On Saturday morning the two are at their very closest, almost “touching” in the sky, only a quarter of a degree apart. You’ll also notice that Venus and Saturn have switched places, with Saturn to the upper right of Venus. On Sunday morning the two planets will be a little farther apart and from morning to morning after that they’ll part company more and more.
As I said before you don’t need a telescope to view this conjunction, but if you have even a small scope you should be able to see Saturn’s ring system oriented diagonally. If your scope is powerful enough you might also see some of Saturn’s moons that look like tiny stars, especially Titan, its largest moon. Because Saturn is low in the sky, though, and we have to view it through thicker levels of Earth’s atmosphere, it will be really fuzzy.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and broadcast meteorologist.
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