Moon to join two planets in Saturday’s evening sky

It will be worth looking up at dusk Saturday evening — lack of clouds permitting — to see Jupiter and Venus close to the crescent moon in the darkening sky.

“It won’t be quite as spectacular” as the Jupiter-Venus conjunction of late June, Greg Novacek, director of Lake Afton Public Observatory, said Friday.

“They’ve been slowly moving apart over the past couple weeks,” Novacek said of the two planets. But what will make Saturday evening an occasion is that the moon will join them.

You won’t want to wait until later Saturday to check out the sight, because the planets will be sinking lower and lower toward the horizon. But go out as soon as the sky starts to get dark, looking west-northwest, and if you don’t see anything, wait 10 to 15 minutes and try again, Novacek said. The moon will be easy to see and provide a good guide. Then you’ll see bright Venus and the fainter Jupiter to the north, Novacek said.

“It’s best looked at with the naked eye or with a pair of binoculars.”

If you check out the sky again Sunday evening, you’ll see that the moon has moved farther east, Novacek said.

This story was originally published July 17, 2015 at 2:38 PM with the headline "Moon to join two planets in Saturday’s evening sky."