SUNSET: 
June 4 - 10, 2012
[skyweekvid id="b0f7ax1x"]The Moon experiences a partial lunar eclipse before dawn on Monday. And we look at the historical and scientific importance of Tuesday’s Transit of Venus across the Sun.
May 28 - June 3, 2012
[skyweekvid id="eijr2v39"]Get ready for the partial lunar eclipse before dawn on June 4th and the twice-in-a-lifetime chance to see Venus’s dark disk cross the Sun on June 5th.
May 21 - 27, 2012
[skyweekvid id="z3eph090"]This week is your last easy chance to see Venus before it crosses the Sun’s disk on June 5th. And the constellation Hercules, with its magnificent star cluster, is rising in the east.
May 14 - 20, 2012
[skyweekvid id="o26jp77d"]A partial solar eclipse is visible over most of the U.S. on Sunday, May 20th. And in parts of the West the eclipse is annular, with a ring of sunlight all around the Moon’s dark disk.
May 7 - 13, 2012
[skyweekvid id="f3gg21rm"]Venus, Mars, and Saturn are all paired with bright stars this week. Saturn is in Virgo, the great constellation of spring, and the site of a remarkable galaxy cluster.
April 30 - May 6, 2012
[skyweekvid id="u986y37v"]The closest and biggest full Moon of 2012 happens on Saturday, May 5th. That means that high tides will be unusually high and low tides will be unusually low.
April 23 - 29, 2012
[skyweekvid id="utw30156"]The waxing crescent Moon appears higher in the west each evening this week. And the planet Venus is also now a crescent, a phenomenon of great historical importance.
April 16 - 22, 2012
[skyweekvid id="s7tie7t2"]Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, is a compact jewel of a constellation. And the dazzling orange star Arcturus nearby may be a visitor from another galaxy.
April 9 - 15, 2012
[skyweekvid id="urzw6dow"]You can see five great star clusters with your unaided eyes on evenings at this time of year. One of them is widely known, but rarely recognized as a true star cluster.
April 2 - 8, 2012
[skyweekvid id="pg9wwysj"]Venus passes through the Pleiades star cluster on Monday and Tuesday. And Saturn, the magnificent ringed planet, is now well up in the evening sky.
March 26 - April 1, 2012
[skyweekvid id="e810nn8a"]The Big Dipper, the best-known star pattern in the sky is now high in the northeast in the evening. It's just part of the much larger constellation Ursa Major.
March 19 - 25, 2012
[skyweekvid id="vh7aztb7"]Spring starts this week on Monday night, a date called the Vernal Equinox. For the next six months, days will be longer than nights in the Northern Hemisphere.
March 12 - 18, 2012
[skyweekvid id="nn531wut"]Venus and Jupiter are paired spectacularly in the western sky. Meanwhile, the twin stars Castor and Pollux form a less glamorous but much longer lived pair high in the south.
March 5 - 11, 2012
[skyweekvid id="ltrmupw8"]This is a dramatic week for planet watchers. In the east, Mars is at its brightest and closest to Earth for 2012. On the opposite side of the sky, Venus and Jupiter form a spectacular pair.
February 27 - March 4, 2012
[skyweekvid id="jgoc353l"]This week the night sky’s six or seven brightest objects are all visible 45 minutes after sunset, something that won’t happen again for decades.
February 20 - 26, 2012
[skyweekvid id="xf53xgi3"]The waxing crescent Moon passes close to three planets this week: Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter. All of them lie close to an imaginary line in the sky called the ecliptic.
February 13 - 19, 2012
[skyweekvid id="o24ge3x1"]Orion is center stage in the south as the sky grows dark. This constellation contains 7 of the sky’s 100 brightest stars. And most of Orion’s main stars are physically related.
February 6 - 12, 2012
[skyweekvid id="mf8bdls0"]Mars, the Red Planet, is beginning to appear in the evening sky. In many ways, Mars is the planet most like Earth, with deserts, dust storms, and maybe even running water on rare occasions.
January 30 - February 5, 2012
[skyweekvid id="z4t9hmkk"]This week Eros, the grandaddy of all near-Earth asteroids, is making its closest approach to Earth since 1975, just 16.6 million miles away. That make it our second-closest neighbor after the Moon.
January 23- 29, 2012
[skyweekvid id="z8163246"]Learn how Perseus rescued Andromeda, and find out how and why Queen Cassiopeia is doomed to rotate forever in the sky.
