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This is the Griffith Observatory Sky Report through August 29th, 2018. Here’s what’s happening in the skies of southern California.
By 8:00 p.m., the sky will be dark enough to see four brilliant planets arranged along a huge arc that stretches across the southern sky from the southwest to the southeast.
The brightest planet is Venus. It blazes low in the southwest sky until it sets shortly after 9:00 p.m. Through nearly any telescope, Venus displays a crescent phase. Over the next two months, the crescent will narrow and the planet’s diameter will appear to grow as it gradually comes closer to Earth.
Jupiter, in the constellation Libra the Scales, is to the upper left of brighter Venus, in the south-southwest. Binoculars can help you to see Jupiter’s four largest moons–the Galilean satellites–that were named for Galileo Galilei, who, in 1610, became the first scientist to observe them. Jupiter’s famous oval storm, the Great Red Spot, may be visible through west coast telescopes on August 23rd and 28th. Jupiter sets in the west-southwest at about 11:00 p.m.
Golden Saturn, at the top of the teapot-shaped constellation Sagittarius the Archer, is far to the left of Jupiter in the south-southeast sky at 8:00 p.m. It crosses the meridian in the south an hour later, and it sets at about 1:45 a.m. Saturn’s spectacular rings are visible through telescopes capable of a magnifying power of 25 or greater.
Brilliant Mars, currently the second brightest planet, starts the evening to the lower left of Saturn. Mars has a distinctive orange hue, and the planet is especially impressive when it crosses the southern meridian at about 10:30 p.m. Although the distance between Earth and Mars has grown from nearly 36 million miles to 40 million miles since its close approach at the end of July, it is still close enough to be worth examining through a telescope. The visibility of the planet’s dark markings, in fact, continues to improve as the dust that was kicked up by a global storm that started in May, and obscured the Martian features through July, continues to settle out of the thin Martian atmosphere.
The moon reaches full on the 26th. Moon set is at 2:54 a.m. on the 22nd, and the moon rises at 9:30 p.m. on the 29th, so the moon lights nearly all of the nighttime hours during this period. The moon appears close to Mars on the 22nd and 23rd.
Early-risers in southern California will have a chance to see an excellent fly over by the International Space Station before sunrise on Wednesday, August 29. From Los Angeles, the ISS will cross the sky from the southwest to the northeast between 5:29 and 5:34 a.m., and it will appear overhead at 5:31 a.m. The space station will be the second brightest object in the sky, after the moon, at that time.
Free views of the Sun during the day and of the moon and planets at night are available to the public in clear weather through Griffith Observatory’s telescopes from Tuesday through Sunday, before 9:30 p.m. Check our website for the schedule. The next free public star party on the grounds of Griffith Observatory, hosted by the Los Angeles Astronomical Society, the Sidewalk Astronomers, and the Planetary Society, will take place on Saturday, September 22.
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From Griffith Observatory, I’m Anthony Cook, and I can be reached at griffithobserver@gmail.com.