Look east on the night of Sept. 12 to see the waning gibbous moon close to the magnificent Pleiades open cluster, with the distant planet Uranus lurking nearby in the constellation Taurus.
The 62%-lit moon climbs above the eastern horizon a little over an hour before midnight for viewers in the U.S., with the Pleiades sitting less than 5 degrees to its upper right. To estimate that distance, hold out your hand: the width of your middle finger at arm’s length spans roughly 5 degrees of sky..
The Pleiades cluster is often an easy target to spot with the naked eye from a dark sky location, though the glare of the nearby moon will make it a little harder to appreciate on the night of Sept. 12. A pair of 10×50 binoculars will help you to resolve dozens of the blue-white stars populating the stellar city, including the seven brightest stars from which it derives its nickname of the “Seven Sisters”.
A telescope with an aperture of 8 inches will reveal many more of the Pleiades’ thousand-strong population of blue-white stars and may also allow you to spot a tiny blue dot representing the ice giant Uranus lurking nearby. The distant world, invisible to the naked eye, will be sitting about 5 degrees to the lower right of the moon.
Capella, the sixth brightest star in Earth’s night sky, will be visible to the left of the moon at moonrise on Sept. 12, while the gas giant Saturn will shine roughly 30 degrees above the southeastern horizon in the constellation Pisces. Neptune will be positioned close to Saturn’s left, though, like Uranus, it will be far too dim to see with the naked eye.
The nights following Sept. 12 are a great time to observe the shifting play of light over the vast Montes Apenninus mountain range, which covers a swathe of the lunar surface a little south of the 51-mile-wide (83-kilometer) Archimedes crater.
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