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The Night Sky
Venus Meets Jupiter in the Morning Sky
The two brightest planets in the sky, Venus and Jupiter, have their closest conjunction since the year
2000 on the morning of August 18. They will be a very bright “double planet” just above the eastern
horizon in the morning twilight. Make sure you find an unobstructive eastern horizon to view this rare
event. These two planets will remain relatively close together in the sky during the last half of August.
On August 23rd, a crescent moon forms a nearly equilateral triangle with these two planets.
Meanwhile in the evening sky, watch the pairing of Mars and Saturn on every clear night in August. As
August begins, Saturn, Mars, and Spica (the brightest star in Virgo) form a straight line on the sky in that
order, from left to right, with Mars being the brightest of the three. The first few days of the month
have these three celestial objects being nearly equally spaced from each other. As the month
progresses, watch Mars race across the sky as it closes in on Saturn and passes just to the south of
Saturn from August 23rd through the 26th.
The annual Perseid meteor shower takes place during the second week of August reaching its peak the
night of August 12—13. Note that it is not unusual to spot Perseids two or three nights on either side of
the peak date. This meteor shower is a summertime classic and is the most viewed meteor shower due
to it occurring on the warm summer nights in August. The Perseids can produce 50 to 100 meteors per
hour under the best of conditions with an occasional fireball also possible. The best viewing hours for
this year’s Perseid meteors will probably be from about 2 a.m. until dawn on August 11, 12 and 13.
Unfortunately, the moon will just be two days past full on the peak night which will hide some of the
fainter meteors. No special equipment is needed to view meteors – one only needs to look up.
This month’s full moon will be a supermoon occurring at 2:09 p.m. EDT on August 10th. “Supermoon” is
a name given to those full moons that occur when the moon is at or near perigee, the point in its orbit
where the moon is closest to earth. In August, perigee occurs just a few minutes past the exact full
phase. As such, when the moon rises at sunset on August 10th, the moon will appear the largest it will
be in 2014.
The first of this season’s free public astronomy open houses at the ETSU Powell Observatory will occur
on Saturday, August 30th from 8 to 10 p.m. At these open houses, the public can view objects in the sky
through telescopes and hear talks by faculty of the Physics and Astronomy Department. Note that the
open houses are cancelled if the sky is cloudy. Further information about these open houses and
directions to the observatory can be found on the web at
http://www.etsu.edu/cas/physics/observatory/default.aspx.
This month’s Night Sky was written by Dr. Donald G. Luttermoser, Chair of the Department of Physics
and Astronomy. He can be reached at [email protected]. Astronomy-related information for the
public, including a link to the ETSU Powell Observatory, can be found at
http://www.etsu.edu/cas/physics/outreach/astronomy.aspx.