I think its pretty - Mars & Jupiter very close, midway between Elnath and Aldebaran. Eastern horizon pre-dawn.
(now! in Central and Eastern U.S.)
Facing east, one sees Elnath as the northernmost of this line, followed by the Jupiter-Mars pair, followed by Aldebaran.
Hold your index finger out in front of you at arm's length. It's about an index finger distance between Elnath and the Jupiter-Mars pair; and another index finger's distance between the Jupiter-Mars pair and Aldebaran.
Both Mars and Aldebaran are a reddish or orangish color.
Elnath is one of Taurus the Bull's horns. Aldebaran is in the center of Taurus.
Jupiter is very bright (magnitude MINUS 2.2), while Mars is kinda bright (mag: +0.8, about the same brightness as Aldebaran (+1.0)). Mars is just above Jupiter and a little to the right.
Counterintuitively, the more negative the magnitude, the brighter the star or planet. And for positive magnitude stars/planets, the smaller the number, the brighter it is. As Tim Walz might say, "that's weird".
Capella is also noteworthy (the 6th brightest of all stars, magnitude 0.1) - to the north and higher in the sky than Elnath.
Some people will see Orion beginning to rise.
https://in-the-sky.org/skymap2.php
UNcheck the box "Deep Sky" below the sky map as that clutters things up with stuff you can't see without binoculars at least.
For an alternate "planetarium view": . Pull down "Charts" from the top black menu bar, and pick Planetarium.
https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php
Then scroll out some to zoom out until the horizon appears, then zoom out some more., Then hold the mouse button down while rotating things to where "E" is at the bottom center.
Click on the "Deep Sky" checkbox below the map on the left to uncheck it and get rid of all that stinkin clutter.
Actually Mars and Jupiter aren't that close -- they are currently 350 million miles apart, nearly 4 times the distance between the earth and the sun. But from our earth perspective, they are close to touching, about a moon's diameter apart.
Tomorrow morning predawn (meaning August 14 predawn), they will be at their closest approach, just 0.3 degrees apart, which is 3/5 of the width of the moon.
https://www.space.com/jupiter-mars-close-approach-aug-2024
Cross posted to Weather Watchers - the forum that also serves as the astronomy forum
= new reply since forum marked as read
