The waxing moon shines next to Messier 44.
A composite view of meteors streaking through the sky over Inner Mongolia, China in 2023. (Image credit: Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Look up! The Perseid meteor shower is finally active, bringing the potential for gorgeous shooting stars and fireballs as Earth plunges into the trail of debris shed by the icy comet Swift-Tuttle. Here's what you need to know.The Perseid meteor shower 2026 is set to be a truly magnificent affair and a stark contrast to last year, when moonlight drowned out all but the brightest shooting stars. The shower will reach peak activity overnight on Aug. 12-13 under the dark skies of the new moon. During the peak, up to 100 shooting stars may be seen each hour as they cut fiery paths through the summer sky, according to the American Meteor Society.You could even spot a Perseid brightening the false twilight triggered at the climax of the Aug. 12. eclipse, as the moon perfectly hides the surface of our parent star. But for that to happen you'd have to find yourself in the path of totality just as a large fireball-producing meteoroid struck Earth's atmosphere. It's certainly possible, but let's just say that the odds aren't stacked in your favor.If you're not in the path of totality then there's no need to despair, you stand a much better chance of spotting Perseids the old fashioned way anyway!How to spot Perseid shooting starsPerseid meteors can be spotted anytime after dark from tonight onwards, streaking away from a patch of sky, or radiant, located close to the red supergiant star Eta Persei in the constellation Perseus.
How to measure distances in the night sky using your outstretched hand. (Image credit: Created in Canva Pro)To find the best meteors, you'll first want to locate Perseus glistening above the northwestern horizon after dark. Next, find a patch of sky 40 degrees above it, and settle in for one of the year's premier natural light shows. This is where the shooting star trails will be at their longest.The Perseids are also famed for producing vivid green fireballs capable of briefly turning night to day as larger chunks of debris collide with Earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to 37 miles per second (59 kilometers per second).When to look for Perseid meteorsPerseid meteors may be spotted anytime from 10 p.m. onward for viewers in the U.S., though the number of visible shooting stars will be higher in the hours before dawn, when the radiant rises to its highest point in the summer night sky. Try to head away from city lights and allow at least 20 minutes for your eyes to adapt to the darkness.Relatively few shooting stars will be visible in the days following the shower's awakening compared to the peak. However, if you do catch one, you'll have seen the demise of a meteoroid that's likely been flying through space for thousands of years before reaching Earth.Nikon Z8
(Image credit: Jase Parnell-Brookes)The Nikon Z8 excels in just about every department and we rate it as the best overall camera out there. It features a full-frame 45.7MP sensor, 8K video capabilities and, of course, excellent low-light performance. Check out our Nikon Z8 review for more."The meteors we see early and late during the activity are most likely the oldest as they have obviously been perturbed from the main orbit of the comet, which we encounter in mid-August," said Robsert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society in an email to Space.com.The greatest number of meteors can be seen in the predawn hours of Aug. 13 as the shower reaches peak activity, when Earth passes through the densest section of the debris stream left behind by comet Swift-Tuttle.Want to capture your own photos of the Perseid meteor shower? Then be sure to read our guide detailing how to image shooting stars, along with our roundups of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.Editor's Note: Did you capture a photo of a Perseid and want to share it with Space.com's readers? Then please send your photos and comments, along
The Milky Way arches into the skies over Nevada. (Image credit: Photo by DAVID BECKER/AFP via Getty Images)
The United States' 250th birthday is almost here, so why not take a break from the fireworks and explore four America-themed wonders hiding in the summer night sky?Celestron NexStar 4SE
(Image credit: Amazon)The Celestron NexStar 4SE is ideal for beginners wanting quality, reliable and quick views of the night sky. For a more in-depth look at our Celestron NexStar 4SE reviewOur celestial sightseeing targets run the gamut from lone stars and constellations to historic lunar landmarks and an uncannily shaped nebula — some of which will require a small telescope or a camera to truly appreciate.If you're new to the night sky, then you may want to check out our roundup of the best stargazing smartphone apps, which will help you navigate to specific targets using augmented reality technology.Apollo 11 landing site One of America's finest moments came on July 20, 1969, as Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. took humanity's first steps on the surface of Earth's moon. Here's how to spot the region of the moon that contains the Apollo 11 "Tranquility Base" landing site with the naked eye on the weeks surrounding a full moon.
The Sea of Tranquillity can be found close to the terminator line seperating night from day on July 4. (Image credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio.)First, find the dark expanse of Mare Tranquilitatis darkening a swathe of the moon's eastern limb close to the equator, where ancient lava flows once filled networks of impact basins before solidifying to create vast basaltic plains.
The location of the Apollo Landing site in the Sea of Tranquillity (Image credit: Moon background NASA LRO imagery, annotated in Canva by Anthony Wood.)The Apollo 11 landing site is located on the southwestern shore of the Sea of Tranquility, between the Sabine and Moltke impact craters, which can be spotted with the aid of a small telescope. You can also search for the Apollo 11 backup landing sites using our handy guide, or even attempt to find where each Apollo-era mission touched down on the lunar surface.SpicaThe United States' relationship with the night sky dates back to its founding. After all, the stars depicted on the nation's earliest flags were intended to symbolize the birth of a new constellation, with each representing one of the 13 original colonies that formed the early union, according to the Smithsonian Institution.
Spica shines blue-white against a sea of fainter stars. (Image credit: Roberto Mura via Wikimedia Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)You can honor that spirit on the nation's semiquincentennial anniversary by finding a star whose light left its surface around the same time that the United States declared its independence!The blue-white double star system Alpha Virginis — known better as Spica — is located roughly 250 light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. As such, the light cast out from its surface some 250 years ago is only now reaching Earth, having traveled for centuries through the near vacuum of space at the speed of light — a blistering 186,282 miles per second (299,791 kilometers per second).
You can locate Spica using the stars of the Big Dipper asterism in the western sky. (Image credit: Created by Anthony Wood in Canva.)To find Spica, you first need to locate the seven bright stars of the Big Dipper asterism above the northwestern horizon after sunset, and trace an imaginary line along the curve of the Big Dipper's handle. Do that, and you'll come across the bright orange star Arcturus, the 4th brightest star in the night sky. Continue that arc beyond Arcturus and the next bright blue-white star you find will be Spica!The constellation AquilaNext up, we have the constellation Aquila, the "Eagle", which shines along the glowing ribbon of the Milky Way in early summer. The constellation evokes the shape of a great
Jupiter and Venus approach conjunction behind Rocca Calascio castle in Italy on April 30, 2022. (Image credit: Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Shortly after sunset on June 9, Venus and Jupiter will look very close together, in what is known as a planetary conjunction.Sunlight will reflect off the cloudy tops of Venus and Jupiter before journeying millions of miles to enter Earth's sky in almost the same place, making the planets appear very close to one another on Tuesday (June 9). But in reality, the two planets will be separated by at least four Earth-sun distances in space.A conjunction between Jupiter and Venus also happened just ten months ago, in August 2025. Before that, in May 2024, preceded by March 2023. Its occurrence roughly once every year is a sign of a wonderful arrangement of planets that may be absent around other stars. And as it turns out, the conditions that set Venus and Jupiter up for their conjunction are the same that are critical for life to survive on Earth.'Pie' in the skyThanks to the explosion of exoplanet discoveries over the past decade, planetary scientists like Kat Volk, who works at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, know there are many distant worlds taking wonky and puffed-up loops around their parent stars. But the solar system is more like a pie of pizza.The flat-disk shape means that, although the sky is a huge dome above our heads, the planets can only appear in part of it.Venus, Jupiter, and their planetary siblings travel in almost concentric circles around the sun. That means that the planets appear just a handful of degrees above or below the sun's apparent path through the sky, called the ecliptic. (The ecliptic is really the Earth's orbital plane, but from our perspective it appears as though the sun is in motion.)The Earth's orbital plane is only tilted a little relative to the average plane of the solar system, called the invariable plane, Volk tells Space.com."That's why, as we're watching them in the sky, they're all kind of following a path along the ecliptic plane."It's all reflective of how the sun and the planets formed, said Volk."When the sun was being born out of some cloud of gas and dust, it was collapsing down to form the star. Then, angular momentum caused the material surrounding that [star], that didn't make it into the sun, to form a disk that is rotating and orbiting around the star. The really massive bodies in the solar system
— the planets
— tended to form within that disk," said Volk.
A simulated view of the orbits of the planets on June 9, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)But no two stars are the same. Some systems deviate significantly from this proto-structure. "If there's another Earth out there, there's no guarantee that the observers on that 'Earth' would see the same kind of nice ecliptic plane that we see in our solar system."Our cosmic neighborhood is flat and relatively circular, but that is not universal. "The sun isn't by itself in the galaxy," said Volk. "A lot of stars form in clusters. Sometimes stars actually interrupt and interact with each other," which could boot baby planets into a "wider range of inclinations."Larger planetary tilts may have happened in the ancient past to our solar system. But after the gas giants migrated from nearer to the sun to the cold reaches they inhabit today, the inner planets and the remaining mass of small bodies like comets and asteroids likely helped to balance out their orbits.As a result, Earth gets to inhabit what's known as a "dynamically cold" configuration. The planets coast past one another on the ecliptic, and appear to us to nuzzle one another every so often.
Jupiter and Venus as seen during conjunction over Italy on April 30, 2022. (Image credit: Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images)The planetary dance and life on EarthThese celestial musings are a symptom of a solar system that supports life on Earth. Orbital dynamics control the distance a planet is from
Get ready for a spectacular sight on June 9, as Jupiter and Venus make a close approach in the evening sky, while Mercury shines close to the western horizon in the glow of the setting sun.Stargazers in the U.S. will see the bright light of Venus glowing less than 20 degrees above the horizon at sunset — roughly the width of two clenched fists held at arm's length — with Jupiter to its lower left. Mercury, meanwhile, is more challenging to spot, as it shines approximately 10 degrees below and to the lower right of the pair, requiring a clear view to the west.Venus and Jupiter will be separated by less than 2 degrees in the night sky — close enough to share the field of view of a pair of 10x50 binoculars. You may also be able to spot Jupiter's four Galilean moons — Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede — appearing as tiny star-like points of light surrounding the gas giant.The following nights will see Venus rise above Jupiter as it tracks a path toward the heart of the nearby constellation Cancer, where it will shine with the open star cluster Messier 44 — also known as Praesepe or the Beehive Cluster — on June 20.Celestron NexStar 4SE
(Image credit: Amazon)The Celestron NexStar 4SE is ideal for beginners wanting quality, reliable and quick views of the night sky. It's sturdily built, quick to set up and automatically locates night sky targets and provides crisp, clear views of them. For a more in-depth look at our Celestron NexStar 4SE reviewJupiter, meanwhile, will be progressively harder to spot following its rendezvous with Venus on June 9, appearing fractionally lower on the horizon with each passing night. By early July, the gas giant will be a challenge to spot in the glow of the setting sun, and won't be seen again until mid-August, when it reappears in the eastern morning sky.Want to get a closer look at the planets? Then be sure to read our roundup of the best telescopes available in 2026. If you're a photographer, then you may also want to read our guide to the top smart telescopes for capturing the night sky, along with our picks of the most capable cameras and lenses for astrophotography.Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
Planets Jupiter and Venus reaching their conjunction rise before sunrise behind Rocca Calascio castle, Italy, on April 29, 2022. (Image credit: Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The June evening sky this year is exceptionally interesting.A spectacular gathering of three planets, two bright stars, plus, later this month, a slender crescent moon, will be the chief celestial attraction in the evening sky during the next few weeks. It will, in fact, be possible for anyone with a clear and unobstructed view of the western sky to see all three planets at a single glance.And two of these planets — Venus and Jupiter — are by far the brightest of those that are readily visible with the unaided eye. In fact, on one particular evening, Tuesday, June 9, these two worlds will seem to "call attention to themselves," even to those who normally do not look up into the night sky.Jupiter and Venus draw togetherNo doubt during the past week or so, even casual sky watchers have already taken note of Venus and Jupiter in the guise of two very bright "stars" that have been evident in the west-northwest sky for at least a couple of hours after sunset.Both shine with a silvery-white luster and one — Venus — appears considerably brighter. And especially noticeable over the course of recent nights is that they seem to be drawing closer to each other. In fact, at this moment in time, from our earthly viewpoint, they literally are like two celestial ships passing in the night. Jupiter will appear about one-seventh as bright as Venus.
Night sky on June 7, 2026. (Image credit: Joe Rao/Starry Night/Canva Pro)On June 7, the two planets will appear side-by-side as they descend toward the horizon, with Jupiter on the left and Venus on the right. They'll be separated by 2.3 degrees. On June 8, Venus will have moved to the upper right of Jupiter, the gap between them having been reduced to 1.8 degrees.
Night sky on June 8, 2026. (Image credit: Joe Rao/Starry Night/Canva Pro)As we have just noted, the two planets will appear closest on June 9. The actual closest approach, with Venus sliding just 1.6 degrees above (north) of Jupiter, will take place at 12 hours Universal Time (UT), which is during the daytime for North America. At that time, just over three times the apparent width of the full moon will separate these two planets. Nonetheless, even though they will already be in the process of slowly separating as darkness falls later that evening, the two planets will still appear practically as close as they were just hours before.Thereafter, Jupiter will appear to drop rapidly away from Venus, setting progressively earlier and becoming more and more deeply immersed in the bright evening twilight during the balance of June. It will likely disappear in early July.
Night sky on June 9, 2026. (Image credit: Joe Rao/Starry Night/Canva Pro)Venus, on the other hand, reaches its highest altitude in the western evening twilight during June for this current apparition and captures the gaze of millions. All through June, it will appear each evening more than 25 degrees high in the west right after sunset and will not drop below the horizon until at least 2.5 hours later. During this time, Venus will be setting unusually late in the evening, not disappearing beyond the west-northwest horizon until after 11 p.m.Mercury joins the lineupWhile all this is taking place, a third planet will be evident below Venus and Jupiter. That third planet will be Mercury.Mercury is often cited as the most difficult of the five bright planets to see. Called an "inferior planet" because its orbit is nearer to the sun than the Earth's, Mercury –scarcely more than half as far from the sun as Venus is — always appears from our vantage point to be in the same general direction as the sun and it's usually lost in the sunlight. Yet it's not really that hard to see. You simply must know when and where to look and find a clear horizon.And for those living in the Northern Hemisphere, a gr
An artist's impression of a planet orbiting a star in a triple system. (Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser)
A triple star system in which the stars all eclipse one another from our vantage point is standing out as one of the best studied stellar trios; as the stars age, they could even merge.The triple system, known as TIC 295741342, is 3,080 light-years from Earth and was found by NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission. It features a binary system composed of two stars almost identical to the sun, orbited by a larger third star of 1.7 solar masses.Triple star systems abound in the galaxy, but what makes TIC 295741342 more remarkable is that all three stars orbit each other in the same plane, and that plane is aligned edge-on to us.TESS charts the light curves of stars, which is essentially a graph of brightness versus time. Typically, it is looking for the small dip in light as an exoplanet moves in front of, or transits, its star, but TESS also excels at witnessing stars in binary and triple systems also moving in front of each other — not just transiting, but eclipsing.The light curve for TIC 295741342 is described by Brian Powell, who is an astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, as having a "head-and-shoulders" pattern, especially when inverted. TESS detects a dip in light as the stars of the binary at the heart of the TIC 295741342 eclipse one another. This dip is one of the "shoulders." Then, TESS detects another, deeper dip in light as the third, outermost star moves in front of the binary and eclipses both its stars, creating the "head."As the binary moves out from behind the third star while still eclipsing each other the light curve steps back up to the initial dip in light – the other "shoulder" — and finally back to full brightness when no stars are in eclipse.Powell told Space.com that "very few known triple star systems are so near-perfectly coplanar as TIC 295741342, especially for being such a wide system."Disk fragmentationBy coplanar, Powell means that all three stars orbit in the same plane, just as the planets of the solar system orbit in more or less the same ecliptic plane. Our planets are found in the same plane (or more specifically, within six degrees of it) because they formed from a disk of gas and dust that ringed the young sun. Powell suspects the stars of TIC 295741342 also formed from a disk, but one that fragmented."The protostellar disk broke into pieces to form stellar companions," said Powell.Not all triple systems form this way. In many cases, the third star orbits at an angle to the central binary — but in those scenarios, the third star was gravitationally captured by the binary while they were all still in the close confines of their birth cluster.Disk fragmentation is not a rare phenomenon, however. Hundreds of coplanar triple systems have been found, their numbers enhanced in particular by the discoveries made first by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and now TESS. Yet few triple star systems are as well studied as TIC 295741342.
An example of a 'head and shoulders' light curve from a triply eclipsing star system (Image credit: Powell et al (2026))The two sun-like stars that make up its binary component have an orbital period of just 4.75 days. Separated by a distance of about 6.61 million miles (10.6 million kilometers); their masses were deduced from radial velocity measurements by the spectrograph on the 1.5-meter Tillinghast reflector at Whipple Observatory in Arizona. The third, outer star takes 412.8 days (1.13 years) to orbit the binary pair, at a distance of 157.7 million miles (253.7 million kilometers).This is considerably wider than many other triple eclipsing stars that have been found, such as Lambda Tauri, which was identified in 1956 as the first known eclipsing triple where the outermost star has a 30.5-day period. Even closer is TIC 290061484, an eclipsing triple found by TESS in 2024, where the central binary has a period of 1.8 d
Astronomers have discovered the first signs that tiny red dwarf stars can devour their own planets.Scientists had previously suspected that red dwarfs, which are considerably smaller and dimmer than the sun, could consume their own planetary systems — but evidence has been elusive. Until now, that is.Researchers have used data from the Gaia-ESO Spectroscopic (GES) survey to discover red dwarfs with a high lithium content. This is unexpected, as red dwarfs shouldn't contain any lithium at all — unless they have gathered it by feasting on their home planets."Because these low-mass stars should have depleted all their lithium, the addition of even a trace from their forming planetary systems is readily seen — like throwing paint onto a completely blank canvas," team leader Robin Jeffries from Keele University said in a statement.Though red dwarfs only possess between 8% and 60% of the mass of the sun, and are thus much cooler than our star, they are believed to harbor incredibly hot and violent interiors. This means any lithium they are born with should be rapidly burned through during the nuclear fusion processes that provide the star with energy to radiate.This means stellar scientists have long been aware that discovering lithium in the atmospheres of these cool, dim stars would indicate they had consumed planets still rich in lithium from their initial creation. Indeed, this team found six red dwarfs in three different star clusters with vastly more lithium than would be expected.
Artist's concept showing DG CVn — a binary system consisting of two red dwarf stars — unleashing a series of powerful flares seen by NASA's Swift spacecraft on April 23, 2014. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger)The scientists analyzed their data further, determining that the red dwarf stars may have consumed the equivalent of three to ten Earths in planetary matter in total. This destructive process caused an influx of lithium into their atmospheres.The fact that red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the Milky Way, accounting for around 75% of the stars in our galaxy, means this type of planetary engulfment may be extremely common.Future research into these planet-eating red dwarfs could reveal at what stages of their existence they are more likely to consume their poor worlds, giving scientists a clearer picture of the early lives of planetary systems.The team's research was published on Thursday (May 28) in the journal Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society.
An illustration of Uranus and its five largest moons, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. In an alternate timeline, Uranus without any moon friends. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Mike Yakovlev)
For years, astronomers have suspected that our solar system may have lost at least one world at some point in its 4.5-billion-year history. And now, new research suggests the moons of Jupiter and Uranus may indeed hint that our planetary neighborhood once had a third ice giant.Evidence has shown that between 3 billion and 4 billion years ago, the solar system's largest planets likely orbited much closer to the sun (and to each other) than they do today. It's also suggested that our four giant planets — Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune — gradually shifted into their current orbits due to a series of interactions with one another's gravity.With this in mind, researchers ran some simulations to explore how all that jostling for position might have affected the moons of Jupiter and Uranus in particular — and the results suggest that these two planets' moons only survived that tumultuous time because of a giant planet that didn't.Potential histories of the solar systemClement and his colleagues ran computer simulations of 122 possible versions of the early outer solar system, using different starting combinations of planets and different scenarios for the worlds' migration patterns. They ran each simulated version of the solar system's history several times, taking note of which versions were more likely to produce something that looks like the outer solar system as we know it today. In particular, the researchers were interested in the moons of gas giant Jupiter and ice giant Uranus."Planetary encounters, and the [changes in orbit] that result from them, are thought to have played a key role in sculpting many small body populations throughout the solar system," wrote Clement and his colleagues in their recent paper.Other teams of astronomers have looked for clues about the movements of giant planets in the orbits of asteroids and other small objects, studying them like footprints to reconstruct how they might have been pushed or pulled into their current orbits by the gravity of giant planets on the move. The moons of Jupiter and Uranus offer an especially good set of clues, because it's likely that they've been more-or-less in their current orbits around their planets for most of our solar system's history. Jupiter's moons are in a chain of orbital resonances that could only have formed by the moons tugging gently on each other in passing over a long period of time, and crater records also suggest that Jupiter's moons are very, very old.
A composite image of Jupiter taken by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam, showing the planet's rings and two of its moons, Amalthea and Adrastea. The blue glow around Jupiter's poles is the aurora. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt.)We live in an unlikely solar systemAs it turns out, Jupiter and Uranus are lucky to have their entourages of moons at all.Jupiter's moons only made it through the era of migrating giants in less than 15% of simulations; Uranus's moons survived only about 9% of the time.In fact, scenarios that worked out well for one set of moons tended to be bad for the other: Jupiter's moons had better chances in simulations that started with two extra ice giants, while Uranus's moons survived more often when there was a single, but larger, ice giant. The probability that both giants' moons survive the same scenario is only about 1%.Clement and his colleagues found only two scenarios in which both planets' moons survived, and both of those included one extra ice giant in the beginning."The solar system is the result of fairly unlikely instability evolution," wrote Clement and his colleagues. In other words, picture Dr. Strange grimly holding up two fingers during that battlefield scene in Ave
The moon meets Venus above the NASA "Meatball" in Washington D.C. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
The crescent moon and Venus put on a spectacular show for skywatchers worldwide during a dramatic close approach in the evening sky earlier this week. Read on to see a selection of gorgeous photos of the cosmic rendezvous, captured from around the world.Photographers captured the razor-thin lunar crescent just a few days after the new moon phase on May 16, as sunlight reflected from Earth's surface and atmosphere bathed the shadowed expanse of the moon's disk in a soft glow, known as earthshine..Stunning photos of the May's lunar conjunction of Venus and the moonMeng Zhongde spied Venus and the moon shining in the twilight sky over the Hainan Province of China on May 19, with earthshine illuminating the lunar disk as reflected sunlight poured into the night from its glowing crescent.
The moon and Venus brighten the sky over China. (Image credit: Photo by Meng Zhongde/VCG via Getty Images)Photographer Gary Hershorn captured a dazzling photo of Venus shining to the left of the crescent moon above the One World Trade Center on May 18, as the glow of dusk illuminated the New York City skyline.
The moon and venus shine alongside the artificial lights of New York city. (Image credit: Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)Hershorn also snapped a well-timed shot of a passenger aircraft speeding through the skies above Manhattan alongside the celestial duo that same night, before the 7%-lit crescent moon slipped from view below the western horizon.
A jet zooms beneath the crescent moon at night. (Image credit: Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)Giuseppe Pappa took a mathematical approach to the celestial event, by photographing the moon, Venus and the gas giant Jupiter in the skies over Catania, Italy on May 19 before calculating the angles between them."The three celestial bodies aligned perfectly in the evening sky, forming a geometric isosceles triangle," Pappa told Space.com in an email. "Jupiter (top left) and Venus (bottom right) sit at the base of the triangle with an identical angle of 10°. The Moon rests at the vertex(V), in the center of the scene, creating a wide 160° angle."
An annotated photo of the crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus revealing the angles between the three solar system bodies. (Image credit: Giuseppe Pappa)This view of the moon and Venus — often called "Earth's twin" due to its similar size and rocky composition — was taken by Pradeep Dambarage as they hung over the silhouetted treetops of a forest in Linköping, Sweden. The photo reveals subtle imperfections in the arc of the moon's crescent, created as sunlight fell on craters and broken terrain lining the shadowy divide separating night from day on the lunar surface.
The lunar crescent, photographed shortly before sinking below the western horizon. (Image credit: Photo by Pradeep Dambarage/NurPhoto via Getty Images)Photographer Bill Ingalls spied that same scene unfolding above the Mary W. Jackson building at NASA's headquarters in Washington D.C., as the agency's iconic blue, red and white "Meatball" logo dominates the shot.
NASA's "Meatball" logo outshines the moon in the late spring sky. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)Tahir Turan Eroglu captured another gorgeous view of the young moon and Venus, as earthshine reveals the dark silhouettes of lunar seas scarring the lunar surface, where lava flows had solidified billions of years ago to form sweeping basaltic plains.
Earthshine casts a soft glow across the lunar disk. (Image credit: Photo by Tahir Turan Eroglu/Anadolu via Getty Images)Want to know more about Venus? Then be sure to read our explainer article detailing everything you need to know about the rocky planet, along with these 10 fascinating facts about the moon.If you're looking for a closer look at the planets then you'd do well to read our roundups of the top telescopes available in 2026. If photography is your thing then why not also per
The waxing moon shines next to Messier 44. (Image credit: Alan Dyer/VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Look west after sunset on May 21 to see the crescent moon shining alongside the Beehive Cluster in the constellation Cancer, while Jupiter, Venus and elusive Mercury line up nearby in the evening sky.Jupiter will shine brightly about 20 degrees to the lower right of the moon, while Venus and Mercury form a diagonal line beyond. Mercury — the lowest of the planetary trio — will sit less than 5 degrees above the horizon. You'll need a clear view to the west, but even then you may struggle to spot it in the yellow glow of the retreating sun.Both the moon and the Beehive Cluster will fit neatly in the field of view of a pair of 10X50 binoculars, which help reveal the brightest of its young stars in the waxing glow of the 36%-lit lunar disk.
The location of the moon and Beehive Cluster on the night of May 21 (Image credit: Created by Anthony Wood in Canva. Moon imagery: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio.)A small backyard telescope will bring a plethora of diverse craters and dark lunar seas into view. Look out for Theophilus crater, which sits close to the line separating night from day — known as the terminator — and the Piccolomini impact site, which scars the lunar surface further to the south.
How to measure distances in the night sky using nothing but your hand. (Image credit: Created in Canva Pro)Both craters feature prominent central peaks formed from rock that rebounded inwards following the violent impact that heralded their creation. Their terraced eastern walls will also appear filled with shadow on May 21, making for a dramatic sight.The moon will gently drift away from M44 as the hours wear on, before finally setting below the horizon in the early hours of May 22.Interested in capturing glorious photos of the night sky for yourself? Then be sure to read our beginner's guide to photographing the night sky, along with our picks of the best lenses and cameras for astrophotography.Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
Anthony Wood joined Space.com in April 2025 after contributing articles to outlets including IGN, New Atlas and Gizmodo. He has a passion for the night sky, science, Hideo Kojima, and human space exploration, and can’t wait for the day when astronauts once again set foot on the moon.
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