Slender Moons

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A crescent moon and Venus at dawn over San Diego.
A crescent moon and Venus at dawn over San Diego.
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Palm trees weather a 1993 Sarasota, Florida, storm.
Palm trees weather a 1993 Sarasota, Florida, storm.
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A crescent moon and Venus at dawn over San Diego.
A crescent moon and Venus at dawn over San Diego.

Making time for a new year.

The summer comes to an end and the autumn begins. It’s not only time to go back to school, begin the harvest, and watch the migrations of birds. It’s also time to Celebrate a Jewish New Year, look for slender Moons and Jupiter at its best, and stand alert for the threat of the most formidable type of hurricanes.

An Assortment of Astro-Sights

Around autumn equinox is not a good time to try to see the Moon as soon as possible after New Moon. This evening crescent is slung very low (in horizon haze and glow) off to the side of the setting Sun at this time of year (at least from our highly populated middle northern latitudes of Earth). The opposite is true of the Moon and planets in the dawns of August through October: their separation from the Sun is almost vertical, almost as steeply above where the Sun is going to rise as possible.

This latter fact is good news for anyone who wants to enjoy the conjunctions of Venus and Mars, and of Venus, Mercury, and the star Regulus this August and September. It also holds out a slight possibility of at least eastern U.S. observers seeing a wondrously slender lunar crescent low in the east only about 15 hours before New Moon at dawn on August 21st.

  • Published on Aug 1, 1998
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