How to See Planets at Night in August
Mars and Venus won’t be playing at night this month, but Jupiter and Saturn will shine brightly – and if you look closely, you might also spot a small Mercury just before dawn.
Jupiter is the main event in August, he appears at dusk and shines brighter than any star in the sky; by the end of the month, it will set in about the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Saturn is nearly the brightest (although it is not as bright as Jupiter) and does not glow for most of the night, rising shortly before sunset and setting at dawn during the first part of the month. By the end of the month, Saturn will set closer to the middle of the night.
Joe Rao of Space.com offers some tips for finding Saturn:
By the end of the month, the planet is highest at nightfall before 10:30 pm. However, even at its best, Saturn is not very high above the horizon, especially for more northerly observers. However, warm, foggy summer nights sometimes provide excellent overall visibility with surprisingly stable, still telescopic images. You may find that Saturn looks great on milky white nights when everything else is too hazy to be seen at all.
And lest you worry about not being able to tell the difference between Jupiter and Saturn, Bruce McClure and Deborah Byrd write for EarthSky that you won’t have a problem with that:
Jupiter is brighter than Saturn. Jupiter is the fourth brightest celestial object after the Sun, Moon and Venus, respectively, and is 10 times larger than Saturn. Moreover, with the onset of darkness and early evening in August 2019, Jupiter shines well west of Saturn.
Mercury will be a little more difficult to spot – binoculars will give you the best shot – but it’s best to look an hour or so before sunrise, in the first two or three weeks of August. It will get brighter as August progresses, but will then sink too close to the sun to be seen in the last week of the month.
Watch out for meteor showers while you watch. You may be lucky to catch a glimpse of Delta Aquarids , Alpha Capricornids, or Perseid showers.
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