Today:
The brightening Gibbous Moon overwhelms more and more of the fainter stars, but turning your gaze to the north reveals two patterns that can compete with the Moon’s glow – the Big Dipper, and Cassiopeia, the Queen. The more familiar Big Dipper continues to ease a bit lower into the northwest, the bottom of the Dipper about one third of the way up, while the Queen, shaped like the letter “W”, has risen to one third of the way up in the northeast.
Wednesday:
While the Moon approaches Full, though rather low in the southeast, look to the zenith – the top of the sky – where a bright star shines with a steely-blue light. Vega ranks as the 4th brightest star in the heavens, twice as massive as our Sun, emitting 37 times more light, while converting hydrogen to helium ten times faster than the Sun.
Thursday:
Tonight’s Full Moon is almost perfectly aligned to pass through the Earth’s shadow, a Lunar Eclipse, though a very small portion of the Moon remains illuminated, giving us a very deep partial Lunar Eclipse, reaching a maximum of 93 percent, at which point the Moon will fade to a dim red. As the sun sets, the Moon will rise in the southeast, set to track across the southern sky. The umbral phase of the eclipse will begin at 10:34 PM, with maximum coverage at 12:13 AM, the umbral phase then ending at 1:52 AM.