Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday August 4th through Sunday August 10th.
The full moon for the month of August is late on the night of Friday the 8th into the morning of Saturday the 9th, so we’ll have a waxing gibbous moon for most of the week and start the waning gibbous phase over the weekend. This full moon is known as the Grain Moon, the Sturgeon Moon, and the Green Corn Moon.
Mars is low in the west-southwest at sunset and is setting at 10:30 p.m. at midweek.
As Mars is setting in the west, Saturn and Neptune are rising in the east. The two planets will reach their closest point on Wednesday, when they will be just over one degree apart.
In the morning skies, Venus is rising at 4:05 a.m., followed by Jupiter at 4:25 a.m. The two bright planets will move closer together over the course of this week until they are less than a degree apart early next week.
Mercury is emerging from last week’s solar conjunction and is rising at 6:10 a.m., about 40 minutes before the sun.
There will be no public viewing this summer on the UT campus telescopes so we can do maintenance and repairs. We expect to resume the regular viewing schedule in the Fall 2025 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.
