Stargazing and skywatching from Cosmic Herald — what to see in the night sky, meteor showers, planets, auroras, and observing guides.
Jupiter-family comet 10P/Tempel 2 brightened to roughly magnitude 8-9 as it passed within 61 million km of Earth on August 3, 2026, offering Southern Hemisphere observers with binoculars or a small scope the best view of this comet for the rest of the century.
Read the story →A moonless Perseid peak, a total solar eclipse over Greenland, Iceland and Spain, and a 93-96% partial lunar eclipse over the Americas make August 2026 one of the year's busiest skywatching stretches.
Two glancing-blow CMEs and a new M1.9 flare have NOAA forecasting a 25-30% chance of minor G1 geomagnetic storming August 1-2, with best US viewing odds in the northern tier — though a near-full Moon will blunt the show.
A nearly full moon will drown out most of the Southern Delta Aquariids' July 28-29 peak, but the slower, brighter Alpha Capricornid fireballs that follow on July 30-31 should still cut through the glare.
Sunspot AR4494 threw an M3.2 flare on July 26 while regions 4495 and 4496 added C-class pops. Earth's magnetic field stayed quiet, but forecasters put the odds at 45% for another M-flare and 10% for an X-flare over the next 24-48 hours.
The last ten days of July 2026 hand skywatchers a First Quarter Moon growing into the Full Buck Moon on 29 July, a nearly edge-on Saturn, evening Venus in Leo, and Delta Aquariid meteors that a near-full Moon will mostly drown out.
From July 20-24, 2026, the Metonic cycle serves up a Moon that echoes Apollo 11's landing night, Mercury stalls to end its retrograde in Gemini, and Titan hangs easily beside Saturn.
The Southern Delta Aquariids peak the night of July 30-31, 2026, but a full moon just one day earlier means the best views come from patient pre-dawn watching in the week before.
A waxing crescent Moon glides past Venus and Regulus on three straight evenings this week, brushing 0.5° from the heart of Leo on July 16 before closing to within 2° of Venus the next day.
A waning crescent Moon points the way to Mars, Saturn, and a binoculars-only Uranus in the predawn eastern sky on July 11-12, 2026, part of a busy month of lunar-planetary conjunctions.
Departing sunspot AR4485 unleashed an M1.2 flare and a radio blackout before rotating off the disk, while a trailing coronal mass ejection could nudge Earth's geomagnetic field to G1 storm levels late this week.
August 2026 stacks a rare eclipse double-header around its best night: a moonless Perseid peak on Aug 12-13, Venus at its evening best, and a deep 93%-covered partial lunar eclipse lighting up the Sturgeon Moon on Aug 27-28.
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