FRIDAY, AUGUST 14
■ The two brightest stars of summer are Vega, overhead around nightfall now, and Arcturus, shining equally bright in the west. Draw a line down from Vega to Arcturus. A third of the way down, the line crosses the dim Keystone of Hercules. Two thirds of the way down it crosses the dim semicircle of Corona Borealis with its one modestly bright star, 2nd-magnitude Alphecca or Gemma.
Having trouble with the Keystone? This’ll set you right: Vega and the Keystone’s star closest to it form an equilateral triangle with 2nd-magnitude Eltanin to their north, the nose of Draco. Eltanin is the brightest star of Draco’s quadrilateral head.
■ Jupiter and Mercury are in conjunction very low in the dawn Saturday morning, just ½° apart, as shown below. But they’ll still be only a little above the east-northeast horizon 30 minutes before sunrise when twilight will already be fairly bright. And atmospheric extinction will dim the planets somewhat. Bring binoculars to a place with an open view very low to the east-northeast. Can you succeed in getting a pic?
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15
■ Having eclipsed the Sun three days ago, the Moon is back in the evening sky as a three-day-old crescent. Spot it low in the west about 40 minutes after sunset. Venus shines 4° or 5° to the Moon’s upper left this evening, as shown below.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 16
■ Now the Moon shines about 10° left of Venus in twilight, as shown above. Look too for Spica.
■ Check the sky low in the northwest or north at the end of these long summer twilights. Would you recognize shiny, ripply noctilucent clouds if you saw them? They’re the most astronomical of all cloud types, what with their extreme altitude and, sometimes, their formation on meteoric dust particles. They used to be rare, but they’ve become more common in recent years as Earth’s atmosphere changes. See Bob King’s Nights of Noctilucent Clouds.
MONDAY, AUGUST 17
■ Whenever bright Vega crosses nearest your zenith, as it does after dark now, you know that the Sagittarius Teapot is posing at its highest due south.
Two hours later, when Deneb passes the zenith, it’s the turn of little Delphinus and boat-shaped Capricornus down below it to stand at their highest due south.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 18
■ After dark, spot the Big Dipper in the northwest. This is the time of year when it scoops down during evening, as if to pick up the water that it will dump from high overhead in the evening early next spring.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19
■ First-quarter Moon (exact at 10:46 p.m. EDT). The Moon is in dim Libra, to the right of Antares. The distinctive, three-star head of Scorpius is between them. The stars form a roughly vertical row.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 20
■ Now the Moon returns to Antares, as it does every month. But this time the Moon is only barely past first quarter (as shown below). When it met up with Antares last month, the Moon was more gibbous.
Extra credit: Why? Answer in footnote 1 at the bottom of this page. (And it’ll tell what to expect of them next month.)
FRIDAY, AUGUST 21
■ This evening look for Antares about a fist at arm’s length to the right of the Moon, as shown above. A lesser distance farther right spot Delta Scorpii, the second-brightest star of upper Scorpius.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22
■ As August proceeds and nights begin to turn chilly, the Great Square of Pegasus looms up in the east, balancing on one corner. Its stars are only 2nd and 3rd magnitude. Your fist at arm’s length fits inside it.
From the Square’s left corner, the backbone of the constellation Andromeda extends off to the lower left: three stars (including the corner) in a slightly curving line, about as bright as those forming the Square. Extend the line farther and you can add Alpha Persei.
A version of this whole enormous pattern was named “the Andromegasus Dipper” by the late Sky & Telescope columnist George Lovi. It’s shaped much like a giant Little Dipper. It’s currently lifting upward.
■ The actual Little Dipper, meanwhile, is tipping over leftward in the north. It’s less than a third as long as the Andromegasus Dipper as drawn above, and most of it is much fainter. As always, you’ll see that the Little Dipper is oriented more than 90° counterclockwise compared to Andromegasus; it’s now dumping its contents out.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 23
■ Late these evenings as autumn approaches, Fomalhaut, the Autumn Star, makes its inevitable appearance above the southeast horizon. Its rising time will depend on where you live. But by about 11 p.m. now, you should have no trouble identifying it low in the southeast if you have a good view in that direction. No other 1st-magnitude star is anywhere near it.
To locate it, or to see where it will rise, follow the diagonal line of the west (upper left) side of the Great Square of Pegasus toward the lower right by about four fists at arm’s length.
Saturn, similarly bright but glowing more steadily, is about a fist and a half below the Great Square as shown above.
This Week’s Planet Roundup
Mercury is lost deep in the dawn.
Venus continues to shine brightly (magnitude –4.5) as the “Evening Star” low in the west in twilight. It continues to set at twilight’s end.
Fainter Spica, less than 1% as bright, is closing in on Venus from the left. They’re 16° apart on Friday the 14th and 10° apart by Friday the 21st.
In a telescope Venus is slightly less than half-lit and 25 arcseconds from pole to pole. Catch it as soon in late afternoon or early dusk as you can, before it sinks low into poorer seeing.
Venus will remain in twilight view until the end of the summer, gradually lower, enlarging while waning in phase.
Mars (magnitude +1.3, near the feet of Gemini) rises around 2 a.m. daylight-saving time. By the beginning of dawn it glows fairly high in the east, left of Orion.
Since Mars is on the far side of its orbit from us, in a telescope it’s still just a tiny, fuzzy blob 5 arcseconds wide.
Jupiter (in dim Cancer) is emerging from the glare of the Sun to begin its 2026-27 apparition. Look for it low over the east-northeast horizon about 60 or 50 minutes before sunrise, while dawn is brightening.
Saturn (magnitude +0.5, at the Pisces-Cetus border) rises in the east around the end of twilight. As evening advances, spot it about a fist and a half below the Great Square of Pegasus (which is balancing on its corner). Saturn is best placed for telescopic viewing high in the south in the hours before dawn.
A few telescopic reports of these subtle, transient features date from the 19th century. The first systematic study of them was done by Sky & Telescope‘s Stephen James O’Meara, a famously eagle-eyed visual observer, using Harvard Observatory’s 9-inch Clark refractor starting in 1977. Spacecraft flybys later confirmed them in detail.
The spokes remain something of a mystery. Says Wikipedia, “The leading hypothesis… is that they consist of microscopic dust particles suspended away from the main ring by electrostatic repulsion, [because] they rotate almost synchronously with the magnetosphere of Saturn,” rather than with the ring material itself Electrons in the solar wind, as redirected by Saturn’s magnetic field, may be involved. “The precise mechanism generating the spokes is still unknown.”
Uranus (magnitude 5.7, in Taurus) hides between the Pleiades and Aldebaran in the pre-dawn sky.
Neptune (magnitude 7.8, at the Pisces/Cetus border) hides 10° west of Saturn. You’ll need detailed finder charts to tell Uranus and Neptune from stars of similar brightnesses.
All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world’s mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions and graphics that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is Universal Time minus 4 hours. UT is also known as UTC, GMT, or Z time.
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 is an outdoor nature hobby. For a more detailed constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential magazine of astronomy.
For the attitude every amateur astronomer needs, read Jennifer Willis’s Modest Expectations Give Rise to Delight.
Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you’ll want a much more detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas, in either the original or Jumbo Edition. Both show all 30,000 stars to magnitude 7.6, and 1,500 deep-sky targets — star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies — to search out among them.
Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many, as well as many more deep-sky objects. It’s currently out of print, but maybe you can find one used.
The next up, once you know your way around well, are the even larger Interstellarum Deep-Sky Atlas (with 201,000+ stars to magnitude 9.5, and 14,000 deep-sky objects selected to be detectable by eye in very large amateur telescopes), and Uranometria 2000.0 (332,000 stars to mag 9.75, and 10,300 deep-sky objects).
For the necessary tricks, read How to Use a Star Chart with a Telescope. It applies just as much to electronic charts on your phone or tablet — which many observers find handier and more versatile, if sometimes less well designed and contextualized.
You’ll also want a good deep-sky guidebook. A beloved old classic is the three-volume Burnham’s Celestial Handbook. It was my bedside reading for years. An impressive more modern one is the big Night Sky Observer’s Guide set (2+ volumes) by Kepple and Sanner. The pinnacle for total astro-geeks is the new Annals of the Deep Sky series, currently at 11 volumes as it works its way forward through the constellations alphabetically. So far it’s up to H.
Can computerized telescopes replace charts? Well, this is what I used to say:
“Not for beginners, I don’t think, unless you prefer spending your time getting finicky technology to work rather than learning how to explore through the sky yourself. As Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer’s Guide, ‘A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand and a curious mind.’ Without these, ‘the sky never becomes a friendly place.’ “
But things change. The technology has continued to improve and become more user-friendly — particularly with “plate solving” software that can now recognize any star field to determine exactly where the telescope is pointed — finally bypassing all aiming imperfections in the mount, tripod, gears, bearings and other mechanics, or in the user’s skill in setting up.
The latest revolution is the rise of small, photography-only “smartscopes.” These take advantage of not only today’s pointing technology, but also the vastly better capabilities of imaging chips and image processing compared to the human retina and visual cortex. The most sophisticated image stacking and processing can come built right in. The result is decent deep-sky imaging from shockingly small units, relatively low priced. The image may be viewable on your phone or computer as it builds up in real time. Some can directly enable contributions to citizen-science projects.
Smartscopes are changing the hobby at the entry level. For more on this see Richard Wright’s “The Rise of the Smart Telescopes” in the November 2025 Sky & Telescope. And read the magazine’s review of this especially small one.
If you get a larger, more conventional computerized scope that you can look through, make sure that its drives can be disengaged so you can swing it around and point it readily by hand when you want to, rather than only slowly by the electric motors (which eat batteries).
Audio sky tour. Out under the evening sky with your
earbuds in place, listen to Kelly Beatty’s monthly
podcast tour of the naked-eye heavens above. It’s free.
“The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking, it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.”
— Carl Sagan, 1996, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
— John Adams, 1770, in the summation of his unpopular, but successful, defense of British soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial
“Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
— Voltaire, 1765, Questions sur les miracles
1. Every month the whole celestial sphere, as seen from our orbiting Earth, turns 15° westward with respect to the Sun. So when the Moon passes the same star each month, it too is 15° farther west with respect to the Sun. In the evening, that means 15° closer to the direction we see the Sun. So, we see the sunlit Moon at a Thinner phase each time it passes the same star in the evening sky.
The opposite happens in the morning sky: the Moon gets thicker at each successive monthly conjunction with a given star.