Thursday, Oct. 27, look toward the southwestern horizon starting at 6:15 p.m. Venus will be 13 degrees above the horizon. Three-and-a-half degrees below Venus is Antares at the heart of Scorpius the Scorpion, and 3½ degrees above Venus is Saturn. Thursday these objects form a nearly straight line. By Friday night, Venus will have moved a bit farther to the east.
Go to bed early so you can view the pre-dawn sky Friday morning starting at 5:30 a.m.
Just above the eastern horizon will be the nearly 28-day-old moon, a thin gorgeous crescent. Just two degrees above the moon is bright Jupiter.
There is more. The relatively bright star Porrima in Virgo the Virgin will be less than 2 degrees to the left (north) of Jupiter and less than 2 degrees above the moon. These objects will be best viewed in binoculars or a low power telescope.
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Porrima will not be very stunning Friday morning due to its low position on the horizon and the brightening twilight.
However, one should note that Porrima is a very interesting and extremely beautiful double star with its twin white stars visible in a good amateur telescope. The components are nearly perfect identical twins, each having 1.5-times the mass of the sun and going around each other on a highly elliptical path every 169 years. They are 38 light-years away.
