Lots of good stuff is happening this month including two full moons! Prospects are excellent for the annual Perseid meteor shower which peaks the night of August 12-13. Come join us at Voyageurs National Park for the Star Party to watch the meteors fly.
Venus departs the evening sky in August but returns to view at dawn by month’s end. Mars now shines at its faintest for the year at magnitude 1.8. Use binoculars to spot it very low in the western sky in mid-twilight. Mercury may also be visible about 8° to the lower right of Mars during the first few nights of August 25-30 minutes after sunset.
Saturn is the easiest evening planet to see. Watch for it to pop up in the southeastern sky around 10 p.m. local time followed by brilliant Jupiter two hours later.
On August 24 the moon will pass directly in front of the bright star Antares in Scorpius and cover it for about an hour. The event is called an occultation, and you can watch the star wink out with your eyes or through a pair of binoculars. Not to miss!
Events:
August 1 – Full Sturgeon Moon. Get its name because this time of year was good for catching sturgeon in the Great Lakes. The August full moon occurs just 11 hours after lunar perigee, when the moon is closest to Earth. Being closer it will appear a little brighter and larger than usual, the reason it’s also called a Supermoon. To find your local moonrise time go to timeanddate.com/moon
August 3 – Waning gibbous moon in conjunction with Saturn 4° to its lower right
August 8 (a.m.) – Last quarter moon. Beautiful, close conjunction of Jupiter and the moon this morning best from 1 a.m. local time till dawn. The duo will be just 1.5° apart.
August 9 (a.m.) – Thick, waning crescent moon near the Pleiades star cluster
August 12-13 – Peak of the Perseid meteor shower. The moon will not interfere. From the city you’ll see around 20-30 meteors per hour and double that from the countryside. You can face any direction to watch the shower. Viewing starts around 10 p.m. local time but is typically best from midnight till dawn.
August 13 – Venus is at inferior conjunction when it passes between the sun and Earth. Temporarily swamped by the sun’s glare it won’t be visible until later this month.
August 15 (a.m.) – Razor-thin crescent moon (less than 24 hours shy of New Moon) hovers low in the eastern sky about 45 minutes before sunrise.
August 16 – New moon
August 18 – Crescent moon and Mars in conjunction low in the western sky. Mars will sit less than a degree below the moon. Use binoculars.
August 24 – First quarter moon
August 24 – The half-moon covers Antares, brightest star in Scorpius for much of the U.S. and Canada. The occultation occurs around 10 p.m. local time out East, around 9 p.m. in the Midwest and 8 p.m. in the mountain states. See Astro Bob’s Astronomy on Facebook for details.
August 27 – Saturn at opposition and closest to Earth for the year. The ring king rises in the southeastern sky in Aquarius around sunset and shines all night. Even a small telescope magnifying 30x will show the rings along with Titan, the planet’s brightest moon.
Around August 29 – Venus returns to view in the morning sky. Look low in the east starting about an hour before sunrise.
August 30 – Full moon / Blue Moon / Supermoon. In the modern era the second full moon in a single month is called a Blue Moon. This Blue Moon will be the year’s largest full moon since perigee occurs just 9 hours before full moon.
Bob King is an amateur astronomer, author, and passionate educator. He served as a photographer and photo editor at the Duluth News Tribune for 39 years and taught at the UMD planetarium. Bob’s work had a great impact on Voyageurs National Park. To achieve International Dark Sky Park certification, the park was required to host dark sky education events. Through the Night Sky Explorer webinars, the Conservancy was able to fulfill this component and help secure the certification for Voyageurs National Park. We can’t thank Bob King enough for sharing his talents and knowledge with the Conservancy community to support dark sky preservation.
