Tonight, look toward the southwest at 6:30 to see the thin 3-day-old crescent moon 17 degrees above the horizon. Thirty degrees to its right (north) is the bright star Altair in Aquila the Eagle.
We are used to seeing Altair in the warm summer evenings, but it sticks around for quite a long time. Altair is "only" 17 light years away and is a very strange star that rapidly rotates, having an ellipsoid shape like an egg. It is the 13th-brightest star in the sky. Watch the western sky for the next several days to see the moon's crescent grow larger until it reaches first quarter next Wednesday.
If you look 30 degrees to the left (south) of the moon, you will see Fomalhaut, the 18th-brightest star in the sky. Fomalhaut is 25 light years from us and has luminosity 16 times that of the sun.
Thirty degrees higher above the southwestern horizon than Fomalhaut is very bright Jupiter, which always stands out in the sky. The moon will pass by Jupiter on Sunday and Monday nights. Jupiter is exceeded in brightness only by Venus, the moon and the sun.
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At the moment, our evening star is Jupiter, and our morning star is Venus. The terms "evening star" and "morning star" loosely refer to any bright star or planet in the evening sky or the morning sky. Since Venus is so bright, it often fulfills the role of either evening star or morning star, depending on its location in the sky.
Friday morning between 6 and 7, the southeastern sky will reward you with brilliant Venus sitting 30 degrees above the horizon and 12 degrees above the bright star Antares in Scorpius the Scorpion. This is topped off by Mercury sitting 15 degrees to the left (north) of Antares.
If you go
Learn more about supernovae and the winter sky at a free astronomy event. Friday's meeting of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association features a lecture on how large-scale surveys of supernovae are reshaping our view of them. The speaker is Thomas Matheson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, who is an associate astronomer at the University of Arizona. TAAA member Mary Turner will talk about the winter seasonal objects visible in the night sky. The free event starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Steward Observatory lecture hall, 933 N. Cherry Ave.
Contact Tim Hunter at skyspy@azstarnet.com