SUNSET: 
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, August 3 – 11
Friday, August 3 • This week four bright planets shine at once during twilight, if you have low horizons in the right places. From right to left, they're Venus low in the west, Jupiter higher in the southwest, Saturn at about the same height in the south-southeast, and brilliant…
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, July 27 – August 4
Friday, July 27 • Full Moon (exact at 4:20 p.m. EDT). Full Moon is opposition Moon, so it shines with brilliant Mars, which is just a day past its opposition. Mars right now is 143 times farther from us than the Moon (and it's twice as large). Its surface…
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, July 20 – 28
Friday, July 20 • The waxing gibbous Moon shines over Jupiter this evening, as shown here. Left of Jupiter by just 2° is the wide binocular double star Alpha Librae, magnitudes 2.8 and 5.1. The Moon is 1.3 light-seconds distant from us, and Jupiter is 44 light-minutes in its…
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, July 13 – 21
Friday, July 13 • Cassiopeia is now well past its annual bottoming out due north. Look for its W pattern climbing low in the north-northeast after dark. The farther north you live, the higher it will be. Saturday, July 14 • As twilight fades, see if you can catch…
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, July 6 – 14
Friday, July 6 • As twilight fades, watch for Regulus coming into view 3½° to the left of Venus, as shown here. • After dark the central stars of the constellation Lyra, forming a small triangle and parallelogram, dangle to the lower right from bright Vega high in the…
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, June 29 – July 7
Friday, June 29 • The waning gibbous Moon rises in the east-southeast in late twilight. An hour later, watch for Mars to clear the horizon about a fist at arm's length to the Moon's lower right (for North America). Saturday, June 30 • By late evening the Moon and…
This Week's Sky at a Glance, June 22 – 30
Friday, June 22 • The waxing gibbous Moon this evening shines with bright Jupiter to its lower left and fainter Spica to its lower right. Saturday, June 23 • The bright "star" with the Moon tonight is Jupiter. Although they look rather close together, Jupiter is currently 1,800 times…
This Week's Sky at a Glance, June 15 – 23
Venus shines brightly in the west-northwest during twilight and just after. Jupiter shines high in the south.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, June 8 – 16
Vega is the brightest star very high in the east after dark. Just lower left of it is 4th-magnitude Epsilon Lyrae, the Double-Double. Epsilon forms one corner of a roughly equilateral triangle with Vega and Zeta Lyrae.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, June 1 – 9
The Big Dipper hangs diagonally high in the northwest after dark this week, while Cassiopeia lies low in the north.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, May 25 – June 2
Friday, May 25 • As the waxing gibbous Moon crosses the sky tonight, Spica hangs below it, as shown in early twilight here. • The Arch of Spring spans the western sky in late twilight, arching over Venus. Pollux and Castor form the Arch's top; they're lined up over…
This Week's Sky at a Glance, May 18 – 26
Stars, planets, the Moon, constellations -- daily sky sights for the unaided eye, binoculars and telescopes
This Week's Sky at a Glance, May 11 – 19
This week Venus shines in the west during twilight. Jupiter glares in the southeast at nightfall, and Mars and Saturn rise late at night.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, May 4 – 12
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 Week's Sky at a Glance, April 27 – May 5
Keep an eye on the changing pattern of Venus with Aldebaran and the Pleiades, in the west as twilight fades.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 20 – 28
Friday, April 20 • This evening the dark limb of the crescent Moon will occult 4th-magnitude multiple star Nu Geminorum, in the feet of Gemini, for parts of the southern U.S. and points south. For rough time estimates at your location, interpolate between the time predictions in the April Sky…
This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 13 – 21
After dark, Leo walks horizontally across the meridian high in the south. His brightest star is Regulus, the bottom star of Leo's Sickle.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 6 – 14
The two Dog Stars stand vertically aligned around the end of twilight. Look southwest. Brilliant Sirius in Canis Major is below; Procyon in Canis Minor is high above.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, March 30 – April 7
After nightfall, Orion is still well up in the southwest in his spring orientation: striding down to the right, with his belt horizontal. Shining above the belt is bright orange Betelgeuse. Down below the belt is bright white Rigel.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, March 23 – 31
The first-quarter Moon shines high above Orion on the evening of March 24, 2018, in the feet of Gemini below Castor and Pollux.
