In last month’s installment the Western part of the country was favored with a total lunar eclipse. This month the Northeast gets its turn—this time for a solar eclipse. As was the case in May, this will also largely be a “horizon-hugging” event requiring an unobstructed one to be seen to advantage. Despite the challenge, this will be well worth making the effort to observe.

This month the western part of the country gets to see an eclipse of the Moon—and next month the northeast will glimpse an eclipse of the Sun. (see the June Sky Talk). This will largely be a “horizon-hugging” event, with the most dramatic views being along the coast.

A simple question, right? But it depends on whether you mean how large in actual physical size our satellite is—or how large does it appear in the sky. The answer to one is straight forward, but that to the other is both complex and surprising.

An “elongation” is the term used to describe the position of the inner planets Mercury and Venus with respect to the Sun in the sky. It can be a Greatest Eastern Elongation in which the planet appears at its greatest distance east of the setting Sun in the evening—or a Greatest Western Elongation where the planet is at its greatest distance west of the Sun in the morning sky.

The evening sky this month offers a great opportunity to see the Solar System’s two planetary extremes among the five bright naked-eye planets in terms of their orbital motion—sprinting Mercury and sluggish Saturn!

The planets Jupiter and Saturn will come together this month in a spectacular conjunction low in the southwestern sky after sunset just in time for Christmas, recreating that famed “Star of Bethlehem.” These two worlds have been near each other in the evening sky since late summer, drawing ever-closer together from week-to-week in preparation for this month’s big event.

Wow – a meteor shower with an average rate of just 15 “shooting stars” an hour at its peak but one that has on occasion suddenly exploded at a rate of 40 per second! That’s the famed annual Leonid’s, which occur this year on the night of November 16th into the morning of the 17th. No other shower in recorded history has produced such an intense burst of activity—nor been so erratic and unpredictable.

In October the planet Mars makes another of its once every 26 month visits to the Earth and blazes like a ruddy-orange beacon above the eastern horizon after sunset. Normally the most disappointing of the five bright naked-eye planets (see below), it now takes center stage and dominates the night sky!

There is nothing so lovely as seeing a big bright full-Moon rising over the eastern horizon. But when our satellite is around its full phase it is the bane of serious stargazers (who are often called “Moon dodgers”!). Although moonlight doesn’t interfere with the planets and brightest stars, it brightens the sky enough to mask fainter wonders like star clusters, nebulae and galaxies.

For many skywatchers, this is “meteor month” — so named after the famed Perseid Meteor Shower that peaks each year during the second week of August. And while not normally the richest of these annual celestial fireworks displays, it’s certainly the best-known and among the most reliable of them all. The only uncertainty involved in viewing such events (aside, of course, from clear skies!) is if the presence of a bright Moon will offer interference. This time, the answer is “yes, it will” or “no, it won’t”—depending on what time of the night you go looking.