What’s Up This First Week of August

Despite some rain over the weekend, Sunday night through most of this week will have mostly clear skies! The temperature will be in the 70s in the hours following sunset. This is quite comfortable, just don’t forget your bug spray. Sunset is around 8:50 PM so be ready to observe the night sky by 9:50 PM. During the clear nights this week, be on the lookout for the bright full moon, some stray Perseid meteors, a crescent Venus, and late-night Saturn.

This Monday, August 1st, marks the full moon. While this isn’t an ideal time to be stargazing for faint deep-sky objects, it can be a great time to bust out some binoculars or a high-power telescope and test yourself on lunar geography. Around the time of the full moon is great for nighttime landscape photos or even long-exposure images of people. The bright moon (shining at magnitude -12.6) will surely light up your subject.

The famous Perseid meteor shower is right around the corner! This year the shower will peak on the morning of August 13th. Since we are in the week leading up to the peak, there will likely be some “premature” meteors that streak across the sky. These shooting stars are traveling at 133,000 mph on average through the atmosphere causing them to heat up to thousands of degrees and leave a fleeting tail. You might need to stare at the sky for several minutes continuously if you want a chance at seeing them. Don’t look at your phone or other bright lights while you wait to spot a shooting star since this will temporarily desensitize your low-light vision. [image: https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/tag/perseids/]

The radiant of a meteor shower is the place in the sky from which meteors appear to emanate.

In addition to streaking meteors, another fleeting astronomical event this week is the razor-thin crescent of Venus. Between sunset and the 15 minutes that follow, look just a few degrees above the western horizon to spot Venus. Use a pair of binoculars or a telescope to view this inner planet. The current phase of Venus relative to the Earth makes the side facing us only 5% illuminated and appear as a thin crescent – similar to the moon’s waxing crescent.

Venus will be challenging this week, but, if you can find it near the western horizon just after sunset, it will reward you with its largest apparent diameter and a thin crescent.

Around 10 PM, look low in the eastern sky to find Saturn rising for the night. You may need to wait closer to 11 PM to observe this gas giant when it will be higher in the sky so you’ll be observing through less of the Earth’s turbulent atmosphere. Saturn has a whopping 145 recognized moons, but most of them are far too small to see without a fancy space telescope or space probe. A careful eye and a powerful telescope can reveal the largest of Saturn’s moons (and the second-largest moon in the solar system), Titan. Did you know that if humans visited Titan, they could fly just by flapping their arms? That is because Titan has 1/7th the gravity of Earth, but an atmosphere four times as dense.

A simulated view of Saturn with some of its innermost moons annotated. Saturn is a “late evening” object at this time of year and will be higher in the sky as the evening grows long.

Several clear nights in a single week seem to be a rarity in Ohio, so make sure to get outside some of those evenings and peer up into the sky. From the comfort of a reclining chair or blanket on the ground, be sure to look for the full moon, premature Perseid fireballs, a fleeting glimpse at a crescent Venus, and Saturn showing off its glamorous rings.

Clear Skies!

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