Best Night Sky events for August
In this illustration the inner circle tells you where the moon is in its orbit around us and how the sunlight is hitting it (the sunlight is coming from the right side of the illustration). The outer circle tells us what we call that position in the moons orbit and how it looks to us here on Earth. The animation at this website does a much better job of explaining our Moon’s phases. https://astro.unl.edu/naap/lps/animations/lps.html Graphic courtesy of Wikipedia
Using the example telescope or better, you should see this (minus the words and arrows). Graphic courtesy of John Taylor
This view is what you should see when looking through your telescope eyepiece at around 125x. Graphic courtesy of John Taylor
Get ready for arguably the best meteor shower of the year. The August night sky brings the famous Perseid Meteor Shower, followed by the Full Sturgeon Moon — a Blue Moon, a Supermoon. Plus, there’s a chance that a “new” star will appear in the night sky and there will be an ultra-close conjunction between Mars and Jupiter. Here is everything worth watching, including many picturesque planet-moon pairings and suggestions for telescopic observations.
Aug. 1-31 — A Possible Nova
A binary star system 3,000 light years away is set to become visible to the naked eye this year, in an event that will see its apparent brightness temporarily increase. T Coronae Borealis, also known as the "Blaze Star," last brightened in 1946, and astronomers have predicted it could brighten again between now and September 2024. This brightening event is known as a "nova," which means "new star" in Latin, so-called because it describes how a previously dim star can suddenly reach prominent naked-eye brightness in the sky. This star whose current brightness (10th magnitude) is just barely discernable through 50mm binoculars (at a dark sky location) could brighten to the same visible magnitude as the North Star Polaris. This is an increase in brightness of nearly 1,600 times. Look between the constellations of Corona Borealis and Hercules to see if something “new” has appeared.
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