Today:
The waning Moon continues its late-night tour, a fat waning Crescent rising just after midnight, to the lower left of Mars. Yet the Moon has found another companion, the star Pollux shining to its left, the brighter and lower of the pair of stars called the “twins” – the twin stars of Gemini. They rise through the wee hours of the morning, more than halfway up in the southeast as twilight grows.
Thursday:
At around 8:15 PM, the evening twilight will fade, showing Saturn to have risen in the east-southeast. Saturn will ride across the southern sky throughout the night, impervious to the water the falls from the bucket of Aquarius. Saturn’s orbit of 29 and a half years means it changes very little over several months relative to the stars, remaining in the faint stars of Aquarius from January 2023 through the end of this winter.
Friday:
The brightest star in the Summer Triangle, Vega, appears nearly overhead as the last of the twilight fades near 7:30 PM. Vega’s brilliance is due, in part, to its location just 25 light years away, and because it is the fourth brightest star within 50 light years of here. Later this evening, near 9 o’clock, a second star in the Summer Triangle, Deneb, crosses the very top of the sky, the Zenith.