Open cluster NGC 6709<\/a><\/p>\nMercury reaches its greatest western elongation at 4 A.M. EDT, standing 19\u00b0 from the Sun. The tiny planet reaches an altitude of almost 5\u00b0 above the eastern horizon an hour before sunrise, glowing at magnitude 0.2. It\u2019s the brightest object in Gemini, sitting to the right of the Twins\u2019 heads, marked by the stars Castor and Pollux. Mercury is about 9\u00b0 to the right of the lower star, Pollux. Over to the far right of Mercury is the familiar hourglass shape of Orion the Hunter, his three-star belt standing vertically in the sky just above the horizon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Through a telescope, Mercury\u2019s disk stretches 8\u201d across. It shows off a crescent phase that is 39% lit; you may be able to spot the phase visually if you\u2019ve got good seeing and steady air near the horizon. Follow the planet as long as you can in the brightening sky, but make sure to put away any optics well ahead of sunrise from your location, which may differ from the time given below.<\/p>\n
Sunrise: 5:59 A.M.
Sunset: 8:12 P.M.
Moonrise: 10:08 P.M.
Moonset: 10:03 A.M.
Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (80%)
*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n
The Moon passes 5\u00b0 north of Neptune at 4 A.M. EDT on August 3, with Saturn standing nearby. The best time to catch the trio is early in the morning around 4:30 A.M. local daylight time on the 3rd, when they are highest in the southern sky.<\/p>\n
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\t\tThe Moon forms a triangle in the southern sky with the planets Saturn and Neptune on the morning of August 3. Note that while Saturn is visible to the naked eye, Neptune (marked by the red crosshairs) will require optical aid to view, and may be challenging with the bright Moon so nearby. Credit: Stellarium\/USGS\/Celestia\/Clementine<\/p>\n
The bright Moon is unmissable, anchoring the apex of the triangle. To its left is magnitude 0.5 Saturn, the brightest point of light in this part of the sky, outshining any of the surrounding stars. Below and just right of the Moon is Neptune, but the distant ice giant is not visible to the naked eye. You can try finding it with binoculars or a telescope, 4.8\u00b0 south of the Moon and 10.5\u00b0 southwest of Saturn. From its great distance, the planet\u2019s disk appears just 2\u201d wide in the sky, and may have a bluish or grayish hue compared to any background stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By contrast, Saturn\u2019s disk stretches 18\u201d across in a telescope, with its rings just over twice that diameter. Its brightest moon, Titan, is about 2.5\u2019 to the planet\u2019s east, while several fainter 10th-magnitude moons cluster closer. You may have a hard time spotting these, however, in the moonlight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alison Klesman\u00a0is senior editor of\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has studied a variety of topics, from minor planets to supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List The solar system\u2019s smallest planet reaches its greatest western elongation from the Sun, 19\u00b0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,28147,66,145566],"class_list":["post-842112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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