In the Sky This Month

The Moon lines up with the twins of Gemini this evening – the stars Pollux and Castor. Pollux is the brighter twin and is closer to the Moon. The brilliant planet Jupiter is to the lower right of the Moon.

Jupiter stands to the upper left of the Moon this evening. The Sun’s largest planet looks like a brilliant star. The twins of Gemini stand above the Moon. Castor, on the left, is the brighter of the two.

There’s a beautiful conjunction between the Moon and the planet Venus early this evening. Venus is the Evening Star. The Moon is a thin crescent, which means the Sun illuminates only a sliver of the lunar hemisphere that faces Earth.

Under dark skies, Messier 13, the Great Hercules Cluster, is just visible to the unaided eye. In early evening, look in the east-northeast for the Keystone, which is like a lopsided “square” of stars. M13 is between the two stars at the top of that pattern.

Cepheus is low in the north at nightfall. It represents a mythological kind of Ethiopia. The king’s brightest stars form an outline that resembles a child’s drawing of a house.

The galaxy M82 is in Ursa Major, the great bear. As night falls, the galaxy dangles below the upside-down bowl of the Big Dipper. It’s an easy target for small telescopes. It’s a spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, but only about half as big.

The little-known constellations Canes Venatici and Coma Berenices stand high overhead in early evening. They reside between two easy-to-find stars: Alkaid, which is the end of the Big Dipper’s handle, and Denebola, the tail of Leo, the lion.

The constellation Boštes, the herdsman, is high in the east as darkness falls. Find it by picking out its brightest star, yellow-orange Arcturus, which is the second-brightest star in northern skies.

Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, stands below the Moon at dawn tomorrow. The planet looks like a bright star with perhaps a slight golden tint, low above the horizon.

Venus, the brilliant Evening Star, is sneaking up on the star Elnath, which marks the tip of one of the horns of the bull. Tonight, the star is a little to the upper right of Venus. The planet will slip past Elnath during the week.