For many people, the Perseid meteor shower in August is the highlight of the year. This is the richest and broadest meteor shower of the entire year, lasting a couple of weeks and rewarding observers with multiple bright meteors every night. You will always see more meteors from a dark site after midnight, but it’s hard to miss a meteor if you spend any time watching the sky during this period. This year a bright Last Quarter Moon rises around midnight, cutting down the number of meteors you will see.

This is an event worth getting up early to see. The Moon will be almost directly in front of the brilliant star cluster, the Pleiades.

Here’s an opportunity to easily observe the planet Venus in full daylight. At 11 a.m. the crescent Moon will be right on the meridian, high in the south, and the planet Venus will be only 4 degrees away from it, to the lower left. You should be easily able to see Venus in binoculars next to the Moon and, once you’ve got it located, you should also be able to see it with your naked eye.

Jupiter is just past opposition, so that its moons and their shadows are very close together. This makes it possible for both the moon and its shadow to be in transit across the planet’s face at the same time. Tonight there’s a “double feature”: both Europa and Ganymede are in transit, as are their shadows, so that for nearly two hours all four will be in view simultaneously. Any telescope over 90mm aperture should show the shadows, and a 125mm telescope should show Ganymede as a grey disk. Europa usually disappears into the camouflage of Jupiter’s cloud tops, and requires quite a large telescope to be seen.

For many people, the Perseid meteor shower in August is the highlight of the year. This is the richest and broadest meteor shower of the entire year, lasting a couple of weeks and rewarding observers with multiple bright meteors every night. You will always see more meteors from a dark site after midnight, but it’s hard to miss a meteor if you spend any time watching the sky during this period. This year a bright Last Quarter Moon rises around midnight, cutting down the number of meteors you will see.

This is an event worth getting up early to see. The Moon will be almost directly in front of the brilliant star cluster, the Pleiades.

Here’s an opportunity to easily observe the planet Venus in full daylight. At 11 a.m. the crescent Moon will be right on the meridian, high in the south, and the planet Venus will be only 4 degrees away from it, to the lower left. You should be easily able to see Venus in binoculars next to the Moon and, once you’ve got it located, you should also be able to see it with your naked eye.

Jupiter is just past opposition, so that its moons and their shadows are very close together. This makes it possible for both the moon and its shadow to be in transit across the planet’s face at the same time. Tonight there’s a “double feature”: both Europa and Ganymede are in transit, as are their shadows, so that for nearly two hours all four will be in view simultaneously. Any telescope over 90mm aperture should show the shadows, and a 125mm telescope should show Ganymede as a grey disk. Europa usually disappears into the camouflage of Jupiter’s cloud tops, and requires quite a large telescope to be seen.

Mercury is well placed in the evening sky for observers in the Southern Hemisphere for most of the month, but less well for observers in the Northern Hemisphere.

Venus continues to dominate the pre-dawn sky, shining with a magnitude of -4.

Mars continues to be paired with Venus for the whole month, but gradually they are drawing apart. Venus, as always, is tethered to the Sun, while Mars is moving slowly towards opposition with the Sun on January 29, 2010.

Jupiter is in opposition on August 14, and visible all night long in the southern sky. There will be several spectacular transits of its moons and their shadows this month.

Saturn is low in the western sky all month, and quite dim because its rings are nearly edge on to Earth, and not reflecting back any sunlight.