Today:
The waning Moon doesn’t rise until a few minutes after midnight, allowing dark evening skies to reveal the splendors of the Milky Way arched over the top of the sky. Early this evening, in the midst of the Milky Way and directly overhead near 7:20 PM, the star Capella sparkles as the 4th brightest star we can see.
Wednesday:
On the next clear night, it should be quite easy to find the brightest star – the North Star, right? No! As you scan the skies, tonight our brightest star emerges from the twilight in the southeast near 6:00 PM, and will be due south at 8:35 PM. You are watching Sirius, known commonly as the “Dog Star”, relatively close to us at only 8 light years away.
Thursday:
Night owls can see the Moon, just one day past its Last Quarter, rise in the southeast near 2:30 AM tomorrow morning. Just to its upper left will appear the red star Antares, the brightest star within the constellation Scorpius. As they climb higher, though still low from 4:30 through 5:30, the Moon’s orbit causes it to slide below Antares, fading in the twlight, one quarter of the way up, due south, at 6 o’clock.