The early bird may get the worm, but the early astronomer gets the universe.
August 2025 belongs to the early risers, when the Moon leads the dance and the planets shine their brightest in the hours before sunrise. Watch as our lunar guide sweeps across the sky, spotlighting celestial wonders along the way.
Beginning around the 1am on Tuesday August 12, the waning gibbous moon will be directly adjacent to both Saturn and Neptune. While Saturn and its rings may be seen with telescope apertures as small as three inches, you will need at least an eight-inch scope to begin resolving the blue disk of Neptune. However, even smaller scopes will offer a blue dot near Saturn this morning, showing how these close approaches are great opportunities to find new objects to observe.
As the moon passes into the third quarter, the morning of Saturday the 16th will find the moon near the Pleiades cluster and Uranus. Like Neptune, the pale cyan coloring and clouds of this distant world are best seen with scopes of eight to ten inches and larger.
The waning crescent moon of Monday the 18th will be near the bright star Elnath, one of just a handful of “linking stars,” being both the horn of Taurus and the knee of neighboring Auriga. Within just a couple of degrees radius around the moon this night will also be Venus, the open clusters M35 and M37, the Pinwheel Cluster (M36) and Starfish Cluster (M38), as well as the Flaming Star Nebula.
On Tuesday the 19th Mercury will emerge on the eastern horizon just before sunrise. This denotes its greatest Western elongation, or the highest point Mercury reaches in our sky, and the best time for viewing the Solar System’s innermost planet. Jupiter and Venus aligned above will help point the way.
Backyard astronomers across Northern Arizona can take advantage of our warm summer nights and dark skies this month to view many wonders of our universe. This may be a great opportunity to learn a little more about your telescope, using various eyepieces to practice “star-hopping” from our lunar guide to nearby planets, clusters and nebulae. Wishing you dark (and dry) skies this month!
If you would like to learn more about the sky, telescopes, or socialize with other amateur astronomers, visit us at prescottastronomyclub.org or Facebook @PrescottAstronomyClub to find the next star party, Star Talk, or event.
Adam England is the owner of Manzanita Financial and moonlights as an amateur astronomer, writer, and interplanetary conquest consultant. Follow his rants and exploits on Twitter @AZSalesman or at Facebook.com/insuredbyadam.
