Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are going to look at the sky for August. We’re beginning with the morning sky in late August this year. There are plenty of planets and some interesting conjunctions on the 20th. We’ll cover just a couple of the things that are still coming up this month before we take a look a whole year into the future for the next total solar eclipse.

We will be looking into the future, but we’re only looking a few hours into the future at first. We want to look at sunrise on the 20th, so we’ll start by passing through the 19th from sunset. As we come into the 20th, Saturn rises into the sky. We will be able to see Saturn later on this evening, it’s rising nice and early, and it’s staying nice and prominent in the sky the whole way through the night. Pushing later, at almost 3 o’clock is when we have the Moon and Jupiter rising over towards the east. then about half an hour later we’ve got Venus rising just around 3:30, and little bit after that we should have Mercury. Mercury is of course one of the most difficult planets to see in the sky, but as we discussed in a previous piece, even though Mercury reached its greatest elongation a little bit in the past, earlier in August, Mercury gets brighter after it moves past its greatest western elongation. This is Mercury coming out from behind and around in front of the Sun, so Mercury is getting closer to us as it passes this elongation. Of course, it’s different with its greatest eastern elongation when we see it in the evening.

This is tomorrow morning as of the date this is up, the morning of the 20th of August. Mercury is reasonably low, so you will need a clear horizon without too many tall buildings or trees in the way in order to see it. However, it is a reasonable height above the horizon for Mercury, and it’s bright enough to see even though the glow of morning sunrise, that glow of dawn which will be coming into the sky. More importantly, we’ve got the Moon, Jupiter, Venus and Pollux all in a reasonably close conjunction. Taking a slightly closer look, it’s a narrow Crescent Moon, almost between Pollux and the two planets. Castor isn’t far away, but Pollux is the closest of the two stars to the Moon and planets. Jupiter and Venus are both nice and clearly visible, one above the other, making a triangle with the Moon. Venus, if we take a closer look, the atmosphere of Venus is all we will see. We can also see that it is more than half full, it is closer to fully illuminated, so we know that it’s not at its greatest elongation. It’s not at its furthest point from the Sun, but it is going to look particularly bright in our sky because so much of its surface area is reflecting light back to us. Quite different to Mercury, as we discussed in a recent piece.

Taking a quick look at Jupiter for the morning of the 20th, given that the planets are going to be in a nice arrangement, it’s a pity that Jupiter’s moons aren’t. We can clearly see Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, but I’m not seeing Io at all, which leads me to believe that Io must be behind Jupiter, from Ireland at least. Moving back a few days ago, Io comes into view, but Europa goes out of view. Back on the 18th is when we had all four moons in a row, of course that’s in the past and so we’ve missed it. The 21st isn’t going to be much better, but on the 22nd, through a big telescope it shouldn’t look too bad. Callisto and Europa are quite close together, so with lower powered telescopes they may actually blend together into a one shape, if your telescope isn’t powerful enough to resolve them as individual dots. If we keep moving forward, the 23rd seems like a particularly good day. We’ll have the four big moons of Jupiter, the Galilean satellites, separated out pretty well, so even with not particularly big telescopes, they should be reasonably visible as four separate moons. This is a few days after the conjunction, so Jupiter won’t be as close to the Moon or Venus.

Zooming back out to see all the planets, we can see how they move as we keep moving forward. Jupiter keeps moving the normal way, the way that we would expect, along with the stars. Jupiter is moving across the sky mostly because of the Earth moving around the Sun. Venus and Mercury are both moving in what you might consider to be the wrong direction, back against the motion of the stars, getting closer to the sunrise, and horizon, each day. This means that they are both showing apparent retrograde motion. Mercury will have been in retrograde motion for a couple of days, Venus has been in retrograde motion for a bit longer due to its longer, slower orbit. This can be seen as we move forward, both Mercury and Venus seem to hang in the same place at the same time, while everything else continues to drift across the sky. As the sunrise gets later and later, we end up seeing the planets a little later as well, but eventually they drop back towards the Sun.

Gemini, of course, is up with the planets and the Moon, they are all very much in Gemini. a little further south we can see that Orion is very close by, finally making a comeback in the morning. Up above it we have Aldebrand and the Hyades, and the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters just up a little bit higher. It’s a particularly nice tableau, it’s a particularly nice collection of things that we’re able to see early in the morning this year, this August. Again, this is for the 20th, this is tomorrow, directly after the date of this piece being posted. We’re still going to be have those planets in the sky for a few days subsequent to this, but the Moon will be new in just a couple of days. With the Moon out of the sky, if anything, the planets will be easier to observe, particularly if you’re not using a telescope, having the Moon in the sky with the planets does look nice, they form that nice little triangle there on the 20th. The Moon moves past Mercury as we come up to the 21st and the 22nd, and then moves in front of the Sun. This New Moon and what many people are calling a Black Moon. A Black Moon is the opposite of a Blue Moon, it is the extra New Moon that you get in a particular period. Depending on your definition, it’s either the second New Moon in one calendar month or it’s the fourth New Moon in one season, or the third New Moon in a season with four, as there would normally just be three. It does depend on your definition, but of course it works out pretty similarly. Normally, if you have a fourth New Moon in a season where you should only have three, that means one of the months will have an extra New Moon in it, so the definitions kind of balance out.

That’s all coming up this year, but we are very quickly going to take a look ahead, just one year, to the solar eclipse that’s coming up on the 12th of August 2026. I very often take a look into the future on this website, often decades into the future, and generally when I do look decades into the future, I don’t know what I’m looking for. This is different, I know that I’m looking for the solar eclipse because this isn’t an event that was suggested to me by a commenter or a viewer of this channel. This is something that has been in the news, something that people have been talking about, that people have been discussing. In some instances, I don’t know if it’s been made perfectly clear that this eclipse is coming up next August, not this August. We can catch this one from here from Ireland, in the evening is about the maximum point of the eclipse. We’re going to see a good level of a partial eclipse.

A good partial eclipse isn’t a total solar eclipse. I mentioned at the start of the video that this is the next total solar eclipse. There is a partial solar eclipse and an annular solar eclipse coming up before this one, I’ll get back to them. From Ireland, we’ll get a 96.41% eclipse. That’s pretty good, 96.41% is a pretty good partial eclipse. It’s not a total eclipse for us, but this eclipse will be a total eclipse from other locations on Earth. The next eclipses coming up, both of the next two eclipses, they’re not going to be total for anyone. We do have a partial solar eclipse coming up in September this year, September 2025, but it’s only partial no matter where you are and the best place to see it is going to be either Antarctica or Australia, and I think it is meant to look a little bit better in Antarctica than in Australia so it’s not going to be an ideal eclipse for anyone to see really. Then there is an annular solar eclipse in a very similar position, an annular solar eclipse occurring mostly for Antarctica and parts of the Pacific and Indian Ocean and Australia again. For most place, that annular will only be a partial, just like the total is a partial for Ireland.

However, it should look pretty great. 96.41% obscuration is a lot. We should be able to see Venus during the day, the ground should look pretty dark, a large portion of the Sun is going to be blocked out for this eclipse. However, it does look a little bit better from further north. From the edge of Greenland and down through the North Atlantic into northern Spain is the path of totality. Taking a jump to Greenland, on the western coast, there won’t be a total solar eclipse at any particular time of the day. However, that’s okay, it is still a partial with a little less obscured, 88.88%. That’s still pretty good, though I don’t think it will get up into the 90s. The partial eclipse is visible over a large range of the world, but it will only look like a total eclipse from certain areas of the world. The best is the middle of the North Atlantic. A few different countries were mentioned as getting a good view of this eclipse, and quite distant countries, from Greenland to Spain, and a partial from Portugal, through northern Italy and into Russia, all considered to be getting a pretty good eclipse. From Eastern Europe, the eclipse will be late in the evening, with only the beginning being visible. The maximum gets to around 97%, a little bit better than in Ireland.

Of course, we have a year to prepare for this eclipse so I’ll talk about where it is going to be at its maximum and how that will look then. This eclipse, as with all eclipses, to varying degrees it will be visible from several locations around the world. I just wanted to show this exciting thing that’s coming up this time next year, the 12th of August next year. It is a total solar eclipse from somewhere, but it’s not a total solar eclipse here in Ireland. We will get 96.41%, and that’s quite a lot, that’s quite a lot of obscuration and it will be enough to have an effect on how bright or dark the sky looks and how visible planets like Venus are during the day.

I do hope you get a chance, most importantly, to see the planets as they’re coming up tomorrow morning. The morning of the 20th is the time to see the planets in that close conjunction that they’re going to have. If you don’t get a chance to see the planets tomorrow morning, there is more time. We can see all of those things together tomorrow morning and for the next couple of mornings. Then the Moon will be out of the way, but the planets will still be there. I hope you get to see this collection of planets and the Moon this August, and I hope now that you are prepared for the solar eclipse that’s coming up next August, visible over large portions of Europe, which of course, we will revisit.

I hope that you enjoyed this piece, if you did, please do like it, and if you enjoy this kind of content, then please subscribe to this website my YouTube channel. Most importantly, thank you for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.