August set the bar high for stargazers, with two eclipses and the peak of the Perseids meteor shower. But it’s not time to put away your telescopes, with some lesser-known astronomical events set to arrive across the sky this month.
The Pleiades will appear next to the moon, Venus will reach its brightest point of the year, Neptune will be in its best position for spotting with a telescope, and as an encore to the Perseids, there will also be a smaller meteor shower.
Here are some dates worth marking on your calendar for the month to come.
Venus near Spica: September 1 and 2
September begins with an easy opportunity to spot two of the brightest objects in the night sky. Venus will appear near Spica, the most intense star in the constellation Virgo. Both objects will be visible to the naked eye.
The exact timing of Venus’ appearance is September 2 at 00:17 UTC. This means that, depending on the your location, the conjunction could occur in the afternoon or evening of September 1.
It should be easy to tell the two celestial objects apart. Venus will shine much more brightly, looking like a white dot that doesn’t twinkle as much as the stars. Spica will appear nearby as a considerably fainter bluish dot. The two will be approximately 1.5 degrees apart.
A handy trick is that 0.5 degrees in the sky is roughly the average diameter of a full moon. Therefore, once you find the brightest point in the sky—which will be Venus—you can find Spica about three moons away.
A Diamond Studded Moon: September 3
The moon will be accompanied by one of the most famous star clusters in the sky. On the night of September 3, it will appear approximately 1.1 degrees from the Pleiades—close enough to observe both objects in the same region. The moon will be about 59 percent illuminated, according to Star Walk’s calculations.
The Pleiades, also known as “the Seven Sisters” or M45, is a star cluster located in the constellation Taurus. Six or seven of its members are usually visible to the naked eye under good conditions, although the cluster contains hundreds of young stars. These stars were born at approximately the same time and remain gravitationally bound together.
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