Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday August 3rd through Sunday August 9th.
The moon is at third quarter late on Wednesday night, so we’ll start the week with a waning gibbous moon and finish the week with a waning crescent moon in our early morning skies.
Venus continues to shine brightly in the west at sundown and is setting at 10:30 p.m. Venus is now just over half illuminated and looks like a quarter-phase moon in telescopes or binoculars.
Saturn is rising at 11:15 p.m. at midweek, so it is now visible for much of the night.
In the pre-dawn skies, Mars is rising at 3:15 a.m. and will be above the waning crescent moon on Sunday morning.
Mercury is now sinking back towards the sun after greatest elongation last week and is rising at 5:25 a.m. at midweek, still almost an hour and a half before sunrise.
Jupiter is rising about half an hour before the sun as it emerges from last week’s solar conjunction.
In space anniversaries this week, Wednesday August 5th marks 15 years since the launch of the Juno spacecraft on its mission to Jupiter. Juno became the second mission to orbit Jupiter 10 years and one month ago and continues to operate at the gas giant. In addition to the numerous science instruments on the spacecraft, it also carries a plaque with a portrait of Galileo Galilei and an excerpt from his journals describing his observations of Jupiter’s moons in the year 1610.
There will be no public viewing this summer on UT campus telescopes so we can do maintenance and repairs. We expect to resume the regular viewing schedule in the Fall 2026 semester.
While you’re waiting for Austin-area telescope viewing to resume, you can tune in to McDonald Observatory live streams from west Texas. You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on social media and at McDonaldObservatory.org to be notified of future events.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
