Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday August 31st through Monday September 7th.
The moon is full in the early hours of Wednesday the 2nd for our time zone and then we’ll have a waning gibbous moon for the remainder of the week. The full moon of September is known as the Fruit Moon and the Corn Moon. The October full moon is closer to the equinox in 2020, so it will be the Harvest Moon this year.
Mercury is low in the west shortly after sunset and is setting at 8:35 p.m. at midweek, about 45 minutes after the sun.
Jupiter and Saturn are in the south-southeast as evening twilight falls, with Jupiter setting at 3:00 a.m. and Saturn at 3:40 a.m. this week.
Mars is rising shortly after 10 p.m. this week and will be just above the moon on Saturday night. Some parts of the Earth will get to see an occultation that night when the moon will actually move in front of Mars but we won’t see it in North America.
Venus is visible in the pre-dawn sky and is rising at 3:45 a.m. at midweek.
All public viewing events on UT campus telescopes are on hold for the remainder of 2020. We will update the website outreach.as.utexas.edu with a new schedule when we are able to resume viewing.
While you’re waiting for in-person telescope viewing to resume, McDonald Observatory has been live-streaming night sky tours from west Texas! You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on Twitter and Facebook to be notified of future events.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
