Stargazing
Stargazing and skywatching from Cosmic Herald — what to see in the night sky, meteor showers, planets, auroras, and observing guides.
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Stargazing
NASA's September Skywatching Guide: Venus, the Teapot, and a Harvest Moon
NASA's September 2026 sky guide runs from a modest meteor shower and a string of Moon conjunctions to Venus's peak brilliance, the fall equinox, and a Harvest Moon sharing the evening with Saturn and Neptune.
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Stargazing
September Sky: The Moon Crashes the Pleiades, Then Blots Out Jupiter
A waning gibbous Moon slides past the Pleiades this week, sets up a close pass with Jupiter on Sept. 6, then briefly occults the giant planet on Sept. 8 for skywatchers in Canada, the contiguous U.S., Greenland and Russia.
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Stargazing
September's Sky: A Harvest Moon, Venus at Its Brightest, and the Equinox Arrives Right on Schedule
September 2026 stacks a Moon-Jupiter pairing, Venus's brightest night of the year, a dark New Moon, the precise equinox moment, and a Harvest Moon passing Saturn into one easy month of naked-eye skywatching.
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Stargazing
A Fresh Nova Just Lit Up Sagitta — Bright Enough to Catch in Binoculars
A newly confirmed classical nova in Sagitta, V488 Sge, has brightened to magnitude 7.42 and is one of at least four novae visible simultaneously this unusually active season.
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Stargazing
Sunspot AR4513 Fires an M7 Flare as NOAA Posts a G2 Storm Watch Days Before the Lunar Eclipse
A sprawling, magnetically tangled sunspot let loose an M7 flare and a run of CMEs, prompting a G2 storm watch whose aurora timing may or may not line up with this week's partial lunar eclipse.
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Stargazing
Comet 220P/McNaught Erupts Again, Glowing Green Over Two Continents
A faint periodic comet has now blown up twice in 2026, brightening thousands-fold and turning into a binocular-visible green fuzzball that astronomers still can't fully explain.
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Stargazing
This Week's Sky: Venus Closes In on Spica as Jupiter Climbs the Dawn
From August 22-26, 2026, watch the waxing gibbous Moon slide past the Teapot and into Capricornus while Venus edges toward Spica and Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn stack up in the morning sky.
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Stargazing
APOD Solves the Case of the 'Mystery Meteor' Crossing the Eclipsed Sun
A bright streak filmed crossing the partially eclipsed Sun from Spain on August 12 looked like a made-for-astronomy Perseid meteor — until NASA's APOD team checked the numbers and found an airplane contrail instead.
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Stargazing
Venus Reaches Greatest Eastern Elongation, Dazzling the August Evening Sky
Venus hit its widest separation from the Sun on August 14-15, 2026, blazing at magnitude -4.3/-4.4 low in the west near the crescent Moon and Spica, with a half-lit telescopic disk visible into late September.
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Stargazing
A Solar 'Rope' Is Headed Our Way: Glancing CME Could Spark Aurora Aug. 17
A filament eruption on the Sun has launched a coronal mass ejection toward Earth, and NOAA forecasters expect a glancing blow late Aug. 17 that could push aurora into the northern-tier U.S. and similar latitudes down south.
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Stargazing
Venus Hits Its Widest Evening Separation From the Sun This Weekend — Here's How to Spot It
Venus reaches greatest eastern elongation on August 15, sitting 46 degrees from the Sun at magnitude -4.4 for its best evening show of 2026, with a crescent Moon and Spica as guideposts.
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Stargazing
Total Solar Eclipse and Peak Perseids Collide Over Europe on August 12
A total solar eclipse crosses Greenland, Iceland, and Spain on August 12, 2026, then the New Moon lets that same night's Perseid peak deliver up to 100 meteors an hour with zero lunar glare.
