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Forbes
3 days ago
- Science
- Forbes
See A Crescent Moon Embrace Venus And Jupiter: The Night Sky This Week
The 4-day-old waxing crescent Moon. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty ... More Images) Each Monday, I pick out North America's celestial highlights for the week ahead (which also apply to mid-northern latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere). Check my main feed for more in-depth articles on stargazing, astronomy, eclipses and more. The Night Sky This Week: July 21–27, 2025 As July enters its final stretch, the pre-dawn and post-sunset sky steals the spotlight with an exquisite series of moon-planet encounters. In the early hours of the first part of the week, a waning crescent moon in the east will first meet Venus and Aldebaran, then Jupiter, all the while displaying delicate "Earthshine" light. As it darts in, then out of the sun's glare, it will reappear in the west and, by week's end, join Mars. Here's everything you need to know about stargazing and astronomy this week: Monday, July 21: A Triangle Of Moon, Venus And Aldebaran Monday, July 21: A Triangle Of Moon, Venus And Aldebaran Wake early this morning — about 45 minutes before sunrise — and look east to witness a panorama of a 15%-lit waning crescent moon above the eastern horizon. Look for a triangle with the moon top, Venus beneath and the bright orange star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus to the side. Earthshine — the faint glow caused by sunlight reflecting off Earth and onto the lunar surface — will add a magical touch to the view. Above will be the sparkling Pleiades star cluster. Tuesday, July 22: A Chain Of Moon, Venus And Aldebaran Tuesday, July 22: A Chain Of Moon, Venus And Aldebaran This morning's sky offers one of the richest pre-dawn lineups of the season. A slender 7%-lit crescent moon will hang low in the east, with brilliant Venus to its right, Aldebaran beyond, and the glittering Pleiades cluster above. Wednesday, July 23: Crescent Moon And Jupiter Wednesday, July 23: Crescent Moon And Jupiter Today marks the final morning to glimpse the moon before it enters its new phase. Just 3%-lit, the razor-thin crescent would typically be challenging to spot, but since it will be just five degrees to the left of Jupiter close to the east-northeast, it should be easy pickings in the 45 minutes before sunrise, though a flat, unobstructed horizon and a clear sky will be key. Friday, July 25: A Waxing Crescent Moon Friday, July 25: A Waxing Crescent Moon With the new moon yesterday, the scene is set for some much more convenient post-sunset sights of our natural satellite at its most delicate. Scan the western horizon 30 minutes after sunset for a 2%-lit waxing crescent moon. A cloudless view and possibly binoculars will be needed to spot it. Saturday, July 26: Waxing Crescent Moon And Regulus Saturday, July 26: Waxing Crescent Moon And Regulus Tonight's crescent moon, now 6%-lit, will be easier to spot and be joined by Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo. Look west about 45 minutes after sunset to find the moon sitting just two degrees to the left of Regulus. A hot, blue-white star roughly 79 light-years away, Regulus is one of four royal stars of ancient Persia. Sunday, July 27: Waxing Crescent Moon And Mars Sunday, July 27: Waxing Crescent Moon And Mars With the crescent moon now 11% lit, it will be higher in the western sky after sunset than it was last night. Just to its upper left will shine Mars, past its best but still unmistakable. The mostly unlit face of the moon will be faintly illuminated by Earthshine, the ghostly glow on the moon's night side. Though visible to the naked eye, binoculars reveal it in detail, especially during crescent phases. The times and dates given apply to mid-northern latitudes. For the most accurate location-specific information, consult online planetariums like Stellarium. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
Forbes
6 days ago
- Science
- Forbes
Don't Miss The Moon Eclipse The ‘Seven Sisters' This Weekend
The waxing crescent Moon in deep evening twilight with stars beginning to appear, with the Moon in ... More Taurus above the Pleiades cluster at right and below the Hyades and Aldebaran above This was March 31, 2017 from Cape Conran, West Cape area, on the Gippsland Coast of Victoria, Australia The Moon looks turned around from what we are used to seeing it in the northern hemisphere in the evening sky This is a stack of 8 exposures, mean combined to smooth noise, for the ground and one exposure for the sky An added Orton Effect gaussian blur layer adds the dreamy soft-focus effect for the ground Taken as part of a 700-frame time-lapse sequence. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images) Universal Images Group via Getty Images Early risers in North America are in for a skywatching spectacle on Sunday, July 20, as two of the most beautiful objects in the night sky meet head-on. A waning crescent moon, just 24% lit, will appear to cross directly in front of the Pleiades star cluster (also known as M45 and the 'Seven Sisters') in what astronomers call an occultation, an appulse, or an eclipse. The rare event will be visible before sunrise across the U.S., Canada and parts of Mexico. From other parts of the world, the moon won't pass directly in front of the cluster, but it will still be unusually close. Sunday, July 20: Moon And The Pleiades Stellarium To catch the moon and the Pleiades together, you'll want to be outside between about 2:00 a.m. EDT when the pair rise in the east-northeast and 5:00 a.m. EDT when dawn breaks, according to During the event, the moon will pass in front of the brightest stars of the Pleiades, including Alcyone, the brightest, briefly blocking them before revealing them again. If you observe after about 3:00 a.m. EDT, you'll see Venus will rise below the pair. The entire spectacle is, of course, nothing more than a line-of-sight illusion. While the moon will be about 226,000 miles (364,000 kilometers) distant, the Pleiades is 445 light years. To put that in perspective, light from the moon will take just 1.3 seconds to reach your eyes. In contrast, light from the Pleiades takes 445 years — that's the late 16th century before telescopes were invented. This long exposure picture taken on December 23, 2017 shows the Pleiades, as seen from Bago, ... More Myanmar. (Credit: YE AUNG THU/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images All you need is an alarm clock and a clear view of the east-northeast horizon. The soft glow of the crescent moon in front of the star cluster will be a stunning spectacle — to the naked eye or through binoculars. Get up closer to dawn the following morning, July 21, and you'll see the moon below the Pleiades, making a four-pointed shape with Venus and Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus. Later this month, the Delta Aquariid meteor shower will peak around July 30. For exact timings, use a sunrise and sunset calculator for where you are, Stellarium Web for a sky chart and Night Sky Tonight: Visible Planets at Your Location for positions and rise/set times for planets. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
Forbes
14-07-2025
- Science
- Forbes
The Dreck Equation: A Drake Equation For Mapping The Hidden Universe Of Federal Regulation
Joe Biden's 2024 regulatory big bang—106,109 Federal Register pages—shattered cosmic records. But the 3,000 notice-and-comment rules chronicled there every year and archived in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) comprise a fragment of the regulatory universe. The notice-and comment rulemaking so many emphasize as 'regulation' is light years from encompassing the full sweep of federal intervention in the economy, business and households. Andromeda Galaxy, M31, with the Lunt 80mm f/7 doublet apo refractor for stack of 5 x 15 minute ... More exposures at ISO 800 with Canon 5D MkII and Borg 0.85x flattener/reducer. Companion galxies, M31 and M110 also shown. Taken from home. Field is roughly 4 x 2.5. (Photo by: Alan Dyer /VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) To the observable final rules total one must add 'rule equivalents' stemming from other corners of the legislative and administrative state galaxy. These include: I have a fondness for astronomy and for astronomical analogies regarding the unknowable, and federal interventions beyond fiscal outlays, debt and conventional regulation fit the bill. The Drake Equation, created in 1961 by astronomer Frake Drake, is a way researchers guesstimate how many alien civilizations might be chatting out there in the Milky Way. Drake's approach was multiplying the likelihoods of key junctures in the progression of extra-solar planets potentially harboring life capable of communications. Carl Sagan on the classic television series Cosmos explained Frank Drake's equation to estimate 'N'—the number of talkative alien civilizations—by multiplying the following terms: Probabilities decrease the further to the right, but multiplying terms gives one a rough guess of who's out there yakking it up. Tiny changes in assumptions yield a universe teeming with life, or a humanity cold and alone. Sagan sketched out an optimistic take of millions of civilizations in the Milky Way—and a pessimistic yet still thrilling guess of 10. TALLAHASSEE, FL - 1984: Astrophysicist Carl Sagan poses before a Florida State University ... More Distinguished Lecture Series speech at the Turnbull Conference Center in circa 1984 in Tallahassee, Florida. The original background of the image has been replaced by a NASA photo of the Cosmos. (Photo by Mickey Adair/ Michael Ochs Archives/ Getty Images) Dreck Invasion: A Drake Equation For Detecting Alien Rule Equivalents in the Administrative Universe Official measurements of regulation and burdens of intervention are rare and sketchy – more astrology than astrophysics in the best of circumstances. Even rules themselves were not counted until 1976, when they stood at a whopping 7,401. Whether in terms of effect, scope, or (most significantly) dollar costs, we simply do not possess particularly useful additive units of regulation the way we can reckon dollars of federal spending. Counting numbers of rules, as we do here like everyone else, is crude since rules' effects are all different. But rule counts are what we have. So with that in mind and with apologies to Messrs. Drake and Sagan, we present a 'Dreck Equation' for framing a more universal portrayal of rules alongside the heretofore invisible 'rule equivalents' capable of eclipsing the countable rules observable by the naked eye. While today's 440-plus agencies issue over 3,000 ordinary rules (thankfully not the 7,000 of yesteryear), the vastness and complexity of more abnormal forms such as dark matter, federal contracting conditions, subsidies, pass-through grants-in-aid to states and localities and more generate unappreciated rule equivalence. A preliminary, simplified, crude, average 'Dreck Load' (DL)—rules plus effective rule equivalents that everyone obeys in a given year —may be expressed in like this: The Dreck Equation would actually need to be a matrix capturing agencies individually as well as recognizing variations in the burdens of their individual dreck components; not a mere average. This discussion aims only at countdown and launch. Term 1: Rulemaking Vector in the Dreck Equation The term 'R' is simply the 3,000 or so rules published in the Federal Register each solar system year (sometimes fewer under Trump administration). For modeling, analysts might use an average over 10 years, or the prior average of the party in power to loosely capture a Trump deregulatory or Biden regulatory culture, respectively. Researchers could isolate rules from select agencies, narrow exploratory emphasis to significant rules, or some other interest. One could also expand 'R' terms to investigate the likes of number of new core priorities or policy imperatives a particular administration might intend to address with rulemaking (for example, infrastructure or immigration policy). Other approaches might emphasize number of new proposed rules, the chance the proposal is finalized, fractions of rules repealed, fraction of rules deregulatory, and so forth. These are all important, but for our first crude pass we'll just stick with 'R,' knowing that rules vary infinitely in their effects and aren't inherently additive. If notice and comment rules fully captured regulation and intervention in the economy, there would be no Dreck Equation. Despite being the most commented-upon and analyzed when it comes to costs and burdens, ordinary shiny-object notice and comment rules may comprise the least of federal intervention. Where the Drake equation depicts the bottlenecks that narrow probabilities of life for an entire galaxy, Dreck is adding back the extant uncounted alien rules, those whose burden's origin is otherwise than the agency's rulemaking process. Dreck is intended to highlight that rules are not alone in the regulatory universe, and urge that policymakers recognize and be held to account for the laundering of regulation by non-rule means to influence outcomes or inflict obligations, whether intentional or not. These will include the big bang of guidance documents and policy statements, the procurement and contracting hypergiant, and astronomical spending and subsidies—for starters. Term 2: The Regulatory Dark Matter Vector in the Dreck Equation (DM × β) Unlike rules (R) in term one, there's no centralized or mandatory reporting structure for guidance documents, policy statements, bulletins, circulars, memoranda, manuals, letters, advisory opinions, administrative interpretations and other assorted variants of regulatory dark matter. Therefore, the numerical quantity of 'DM' is unknown, as of course is how it all translates into rule equivalents. Guidance can proliferate since it skips the formal notice-and-comment process, perhaps deliberately so. It's just easier. The Regulatory Group asserts that "In most agencies, the volume of guidance material usually far exceeds the volume of legally enforceable regulations,' but one finds no official reckoning, making guidance worthy of the 'dark matter' moniker. For our Dreck purposes, the estimated or expected number of guidance documents (DM) can be multiplied by the probability (β) that guidance on the whole acts like a 'rule' (such as 0.3 for 30 percent chance affected parties treat the missive as a must-follow) to 'tally' rule equivalents. For simple reference, a weighting of 0.1 would imply that 10 guidance documents are equivalent to one rule. We're talking gross numbers here but naturally a better treatment would consist of guidance by agency and type utilizing appropriate probabilities (the 'matrix' referred to above, to be invented by future galaxy-brains). While estimates for the amount of guidance in existence or birthed yearly may not be as speculative as extrasolar planetary life, the magnitude remains bathed in the radiation of indifference. To begin exploration of this space, regu-nauts should know that even in the wake of Joe Biden's recission of Trump's executive order 13891 ('Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents') requiring agency online portals, one can still access a subset of over 108,000 documents, up from a few thousand a decade ago. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration, can issue thousands of guidance documents yearly. The likes of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) environmental compliance guidance and Department of Labor (DOL) advisories are also prolific. The list goes on. The weighting beta (β) for the entire inventory of guidance in terms of impact, scope or enforceability is even more unknowable than the numerical inventory itself, but that's why Dreck is here, to speculate and urge policymakers to cope with this neglected frontier. In terms of weighting guidance, at one extreme, purely advisory or informational guidance—which is supposed to describe the totality—would be close to zero. But some guidance can be high-gravitational, de facto binding with rule-like effects. Such guidance could be weighted closer to one (β of, say, 0.8–0.9). Examples might include Department of Education "Dear Colleague" letters, or EPA guidance tied to permitting giving the impression of being binding and enforceable due to the threat of audits or fines, such as EPA "Waters of the United States" (WOTUS) guidance interpreting the Clean Water Act. In tax policy, the Internal Revenue Service relies heavily on notices attempting to interpret tax laws and clarify compliance for business and individual taxpayers who tend to treat them as binding despite nominal non-regulatory status. In immigration policy, Deferred Action for Childhood arrivals was implemented through a mere Department of Homeland Security memorandum that Trump ultimately could not reverse. Other guidance might be regarded as more moderately gravitational (β of 0.4–0.7, let's say), such as labor and employment announcements on workplace policies, wage standards and anti-discrimination enforcement. The DOL's administrator interpretations on independent contractor status and franchising policy had significant implications for gig workers and small businesses that are still being ironed out. Healthcare policy guidance addressing issues like drug approvals, reimbursement policies, or pandemic emergency measures might fit here. On the other hand, healthcare guidance can be enforceable and approach a rule-equivalent β of 1.0 if tied to funding mechanisms like Medicare or Medicaid. Financial regulators also liberally issue guidance on risk and, consumer protections and in endeavors such as payday loans. Term 3: The Contracting/Procurement Vector in the Dreck Equation (C × β1) When an agency uses a contractor to fulfill a project or provide a service, the terms of that contract may include regulatory compliance requirements such as environmental or labor adherences. These can be enforced through the contract itself, committed to by the recipient(s) in response to the conditions attending a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) or other avenues. The contractor assumes responsibility for adhering to 'regulations,' but the agency's public notice and comment rulemaking is not involved. The $42 billion 'BEAD' (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) program administered by the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration is a striking example. Thise vector is really a category of dark matter, but the presence of the massive federal contracting and acquisition regime (that boasts occasionally of being the 'world's largest purchaser of goods and services') lends itself to isolating it conceptually. The GAO notes that the federal government committed to $755 billion in contracts in fiscal year 2024. One important DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) legacy has been the raising of awareness of the number of contracts and their costs. Along with their number, the β1 weighting can help portray the proportion of the overall contract load that includes or induces rule-like terms (such as a probability overall of 0.2 for a 20 percent chance). Every agency and every contract will be different, of course. Term 4: The Subsidies/Grants Vector in the Dreck Equation ($ × β2) Recent legislation – such as the CARES Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Act and the CHIPS and Science Act – entails spending that is highly regulatory and interventionist (not to mention in disregard of enumerated powers) even before downstream agencies begin writing rules. The U.S. Grants website points to '38,302 funding programs and $1,000,090.45B allocated funding to date," and the presence of over 78,000 'funding and grant opportunities.' Meanwhile, in a newly updated report, the Congressional Research Service affirms that 'In FY2024, the federal government provided an estimated $1.1 trillion to state and local governments in federal grants, funding a wide range of public policy initiatives such as health care, transportation, income security, education, job training, social services, community development, and environmental protection.' That's over a trillion dollars in one year alone, and each of those categories sports their own sets of often regulatory conditions to receive funding. While there is no direct way of translating the number of grants or the dollars into a countable numerical rule equivalents, the chance (β2) that dispensations on the whole have rule-like conditions (such as 0.1 for a conservative 10 percent chance) can be applied to the number (or dollar amounts of) of grants, subsidies and funding awards ($) for exploration. The point is to at least stop disregarding potential rule-making vectors. Outer Space Explorations: Other Vectors Of The Regulatory Big Bang The foregoing is intended to set policymakers on the path to recognizing a sweep of regulation/intervention and displacement of free competitive enterprise far more substantial than that captured in notice and comment regulation, and to do something about it. There is much more to add to this simple Dreck Equation, however. Tariffs, government loans, antitrust regulation, green treaty sign-ons, prescriptive R&D, government takeovers of swaths of retirement and health care, and public-private partnerships (PPPs) are – like all the foregoing – rarely recognized as regulation but deserving of their on rule-equivalency β transformer regime. In PPPs, for example, privatizations (such as of infrastructure grids and government-owned lands,) that should have long since been achieved under a system of free enterprise and limited government are abandoned and replaced by the fusing of public and private sector entities to fulfill government pursuits. That makes future light-touch regulation even more difficult and unlikely. The emergence of smart cities is particularly vulnerable to such regulatory capture. Ultimately, Washington may simply elect to govern a sector outright, such as in space projects, leaving no privatization alternative intact for our descendants. This points up one of the flaws in cost-benefit analysis in conventional regulation; if certain parties want government to fully control a sector, recognizing incremental regulation as costly simply does not figure into the worldview (a New York mayoral candidate's call for government-owned grocery stores illustrates an example of this phenomenon). The Dreck Equation is an appeal to policymakers to recognize that unwarranted regulation of every sort, not just notice and comment but realms beyond can sacrifice startups, employment and wealth creation. Looming on the event horizon is the potential for regulatory 'dark energy' enabled by the Internet of Things, exemplified by remote automobile disabling technology birthed in the IIJA. Businesses and homes are just as vulnerable. The Dreck Equation as Policy Warp Drive Naturally, the β weighting actor shifts upward when administrations are inclined to treat guidance as binding (such as Biden's numerous DEI initiatives). Conversely, these higher-β rule-like features can be wrestled downward toward 0.0 or 0.1 by motivated policymakers. Judicial scrutiny such as recent SCOTUS decisions limiting agency authority can have similar liberating effect. Congress's most important steps entail abolishing agencies, banning private aid, an emergency law banning sub-regulatory guidance, ending antitrust regulation, disavowing and restricting PPPs and other forms of business model control, terminating grants-in-aid and leaving funds in the states where they originated, and more. Incremental steps to lessen β include legislation like the Guidance Out of Darkness (GOOD Act), the Guidance Clarity Act, and a genus-and-species classification system for guidance (like the U.S. Code for laws and the CFR for rules). Executive orders, such as a strengthened re-issue of Trump's 13891 purging, reducing use of, and disclosing guidance are important. Executive actions reinterpreting rules like WOTUS or emissions standards are options, avoiding lengthy rulemaking battles and legal challenges with the same fervor usually found on the other side. Deregulatory guidance prioritizing flexibility or waivers for businesses, streamlined approvals or eased compliance burdens all reduce their respective sectoral βs, and ultimately the universal one captured in the simple, general Dreck Load. But the congressional actions are most important for permanent change. This author's annual Ten Thousand Commandments report, despite typical characterizations, is intended to depict not regulatory costs, but what we don't know about regulatory costs. Similarly, the Dreck Equation does not capture all intervention but is intended to inspire policymakers and interested observers to recognize rulemaking equivalents and end their abuse, and for galaxy brains out there to take Dreck Load transparency to the next dimension and help them in that quest.
Forbes
25-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Today's New Moon Reveals Summer's Best Night Sky Sights — Where To Look
The summer Milky Way overhead and through the Summer Triangle stars in July, looking up through ... More trees in Banff National Park at Herbert Lake Deneb is at top left, Vega at top right, and Altair is at bottom. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images) Universal Images Group via Getty Images The moon will vanish from the sky on Wednesday, June 25, leaving stargazers with a dark sky ideal for finding some of summer's most spectacular stars and constellations. The new moon phase, when our natural satellite is roughly between the Earth and the sun, arrives at 5:33 a.m. EDT. Lost in the sun's glare for the best part of two days, it means a completely dark night that's ideal for astronomy — if the skies are clear. Here's what to find in the night sky tonight. Head out around 10 p.m. local time and look southeast. That's where the Summer Triangle rises — Vega, Deneb and Altair. Vega is the highest, with Deneb below it to the left and Altair to the lower right. By midnight, the entire asterism is high overhead. It's a sure-fire sign that summer has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere — and it will be visible until October. While the Summer Triangle can be seen from anywhere, you'll need dark country skies to see the Milky Way. You can find it in the Summer Triangle itself, flowing diagonally from Deneb through Altair to the southern horizon. Beneath Altair, on the southern horizon, are the two classic constellations of summer, Sagittarius and Scorpius. The absence of moonlight will make the Summer Triangle stars easy to find, and if you're in a location away from light pollution, the Milky Way should be easy to find, too — though do allow your eyes to become dark-adapted. That takes about 20 minutes. Stretching through the Summer Triangle, the Milky Way is a river of starlight. Inside the Summer Triangle is the Cygnus Star Cloud, a dense patch teeming with stars. Below Altair is the Milky Way's center. If you have binoculars, drag them over this region of the night sky, and you'll be blown away by how many starfields and nebulas there are. To the north, keep watch for noctilucent clouds. These shimmering ice-crystal clouds float near the edge of space and often appear after sunset in June and July. Observing Tips For skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere, the window for darkness varies. Those below 49 degrees north can expect true astronomical darkness, which is defined by the sun dipping more than 18 degrees below the horizon. Above that latitude, twilight lingers deep into the night, but you'll easily find the Summer Triangle. Binoculars will enhance everything: star colors, the starfields of the Milky Way and subtle constellations — such as Delphinus, the Dolphin, and Sagitta, the Arrow, close to Altair. In an alignment of celestial bodies, Mars was captured here rising out of a lunar occultation on 13 ... More January 2025 using the new Visitor Center 0.6-meter Shreve Telescope at the U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab, near Tucson, Arizona. KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. Winsky In the evenings after the new moon, a young crescent moon will emerge and be visible in a slightly higher position each night. Look west after dark on Thursday, June 26 and Friday, June 27, to see the crescent moon move past the tiny planet Mercury. On Saturday, June 28, the crescent moon will approach bright star Regulus and Mars before, on Sunday, June 29, the moon and Mars will be in close conjunction, less than a degree apart in the night sky. For exact timings, use a sunrise and sunset calculator for where you are, Stellarium Web for a sky chart and Night Sky Tonight: Visible Planets at Your Location for positions and rise/set times for planets. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
Forbes
23-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
See A Marvelous Mars-Moon Conjunction: The Night Sky This Week
The galactic centre area of the Milky Way in Sagittarius behind the grand old barn near home in ... More southern Alberta, on June 30, 2019. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Each Monday, I pick out North America's celestial highlights for the week ahead (which also apply to mid-northern latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere). Check my main feed for more in-depth articles on stargazing, astronomy, eclipses and more. The Night Sky This Week: June 23-29, 2025 With solstice out of the way, the evenings lengthen in the Northern Hemisphere. Not much, but just enough to allow some stargazing to be done. That is helped somewhat by the moon, which this week is a beautiful slim crescent in the pre-dawn sky, where it will dazzle with Venus. Meanwhile, in the quiet hours after midnight, the Milky Way begins to look its best. Here's everything you need to know about stargazing and astronomy this week: Monday, June 23: Crescent Moon And The Pleiades Monday, June 23: Crescent Moon And The Pleiades A spectacular sight awaits if you have the willpower to get up really early. Look east-northeast from around 3:30 a.m. local time for a slim waning crescent moon rising less than half a degree from the Pleiades open cluster of stars (also known as M45 and the Seven Sisters), with Venus shining brightly close by. Stunning! Thursday, June 26: Crescent Moon, Mercury And Gemini Thursday, June 26: Crescent Moon, Mercury And Gemini About 45 minutes after sunset, scan the west-northwest horizon to find a paper-thin waxing crescent Moon — just 3.4%-lit — alongside Mercury and Gemini's twin stars, Castor and Pollux. Each of the four objects will appear to be a couple of degrees apart. Friday, June 27: Crescent Moon And Mercury Friday, June 27: Crescent Moon And Mercury A slightly plumper crescent moon, now 9%-lit, will this evening shine to the upper-right of tiny Mercury, a planet that is rarely this simple to see. Earthshine — sunlight reflected from clouds and oceans — will be visible on the moon's shadowed side. Saturday, June 28: Moon, Regulus And Mars Saturday, June 28: Moon, Regulus And Mars Another post-sunset viewing of the crescent moon, now 16%-lit and climbing higher into the western sky, will also clock bright star Regulus and the planet Mars. They'll appear a couple of degrees from each other. Sunday, June 29: Moon And Mars In Conjunction Sunday, June 29: Moon And Mars In Conjunction Here's the week's celestial highlight — a very close conjunction of the moon and Mars. During the event, which will take place after sunset in the west, the two solar system objects will appear less than a fifth of a degree apart at their closest. Get everyone outside looking up at this rare and beautiful sight. The galactic core region of the Milky Way over Maskinonge Pond and Sofa Mountain at Waterton Lakes ... More National Park, Alberta on an early June night. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Object of the Week: June's Milky Way Though technically visible year-round, the Milky Way begins to impress in late June for Northern Hemisphere sky-watchers. Around midnight, the galaxy's core begins to rise in the south, its billions of stars visible to anyone with clear dark skies (ideally Bortle class 1–3) and the patience to allow their eyes to adapt to the dark (night vision takes at least 20–30 minutes). Ignore your smartphone, use a red flashlight and look — you'll be amazed at how clear it looks and how relaxed you'll become watching our galaxy arc across the night sky. The times and dates given apply to mid-northern latitudes. For the most accurate location-specific information, consult online planetariums like Stellarium. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
