Don't Miss This Weekend's Sky Show — The Moon, Venus And A Star Cluster

Early risers on Sunday, June 22, are in for a pre-dawn treat — a triangular arrangement of the waning crescent moon flanked by Venus and the Pleiades star cluster. The three most beautiful naked-eye sights to be had in the night sky will create a stunning panorama just before sunrise. Here's everything you need to know about when and where to see them.
To catch this display, head outside about an hour before sunrise and look east. Venus, unmistakably bright at magnitude -4.2, will be shining beneath a 13%-lit waning crescent moon (over 30 times brighter than Venus). To the left of the pair will be the Pleiades (also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45), one of the closest open clusters of stars to the solar system.
Aside from the brilliance of Venus and the dazzling twinkling stars of the Pleiades, look carefully at the moon's darkened portion — its night side. Despite there being no direct sunlight upon it, it is faintly illuminated. That's Earthshine or planet-shine, sunlight reflected from Earth's oceans and clouds onto the moon. It will create a softly lit lunar disk above Venus — a beautiful sight!
The entire spectacle is, of course, a line-of-sight illusion — all three objects extremely far from each other. The moon is about 238,000 miles from Earth, Venus about 150 times farther and the Pleiades around 444 light-years away.
Forget all about a telescope. It's what everyone immediately thinks of when they think about astronomy, and it's very often completely irrelevant. You just need naked eyes for this sky event, though a pair of binoculars will enhance the view, especially if you want to appreciate the cluster of stars in the Pleiades and get a close-up of Earthshine on the moon.
More important is an observing location with a clear, unobstructed view to the eastern or western horizon, if possible away from city lights — though light pollution makes zero difference to the planets and the moon.
If you're up for another early outing, Monday, June 23, will see an even slimmer waning crescent moon closer to the Pleiades — just half a degree away — with Venus remaining nearby.
For exact timings, use a sunrise and sunset calculator for where you are, Stellarium Web for a sky chart and Night Sky Tonight: Visible Planets at Your Location for positions and rise/set times for planets.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity. Coral Olazagasti, MD: Hello. My name is Coral Olazagasti, and I'm a thoracic oncologist at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami. Joining me today is my friend and colleague, Maria Velez, a clinical instructor at UCLA, and also my other friend and colleague, Ana Velázquez Mañana, who's an assistant professor of medicine at UCSF. Today we are super excited because we are speaking about the ASCO 2025 Annual Meeting here in Chicago. We just came out from the oral abstracts for the metastatic setting for non-small cell lung cancer and we want to share some of the data that we learned. We want to start the discussion here today about EGFR -mutant disease in the second-line setting. We're going to start with Maria. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the HERTHENA-Lung02 study? Maria A. Velez, MD, MS: Sure. HERTHENA-Lung02 was a study that evaluated HER3-DXd, which is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), in the second-line setting for patients with previously treated EGFR -sensitizing mutations. It was an open-label study where patients received either the HER3-DXd or the investigator's choice chemotherapy, and the primary endpoint was median progression-free survival. The results showed that the median progression-free survival for patients who received HER3-DXd was 5.8 months whereas the median for the chemotherapy arm was 5.4 months. Even though it was a statistically significant difference, it was not a very clinically meaningful difference, with a huge implication that 100% of the patients in this study had treatment-related adverse events and some patients experienced interstitial lung disease (ILD). All in all, taking these data into account, even though there's a huge need in the treatment landscape for second-line EGFR -mutant patients, I think this ADC did not really show a substantial enough clinically meaningful benefit and had a large amount of toxicity. Olazagasti: Not to say that this study didn't show any overall survival (OS) benefit. We're talking about a drug that's not really giving patients a longer life and is also giving many side effects, like you mentioned — a large amount of discontinuation due to ILD, and so much toxicity without that benefit there. I think we'll table that regimen for now. Do you agree? Velez: I agree. Ana I. Velázquez Mañana, MD, MSc: I agree. Clearly, it's disappointing to see the results of not beating chemotherapy in the second-line setting, but I do think that potentially there is a role in the third line or afterwards. We know that patients are going to be getting chemotherapy and amivantamab in the second-line setting. There is a need for further drugs and interventions in the third line if patients don't have other AGAs [actionable oncogenic alterations] or other drivers that we can use targeted therapies for. I am hesitant to give up completely on the drug. I do agree it's quite toxic and very disappointing to unfortunately see these results in the second line. Olazagasti: I agree. Moving on to the next study — Ana, do you want to talk to us about the SACHI study? Velazquez Mañana: The SACHI study was an open-label, randomized trial of savolitinib plus osimertinib vs platinum doublet chemotherapy in patients who, post EGFR TKI, had progressed in the second line and had a MET amplification. We know that MET amplifications are an extremely common mechanism of resistance to EGFR TKI-targeted therapies. Interestingly, in this study, which brings a little bit of heterogeneity, they included patients treated with first- and second-generation EGFR TKIsas well as those treated with third-generation TKIs like osimertinib, which would be our standard of care. They did look to make sure those were T790M negative, those treated with earlier generations. Interestingly, the results on the primary endpoint of progression-free survival (PFS) showed a benefit of 8.2 months in the combination vs 4.5 months in patients treated with doublet chemotherapy. That [benefit] was maintained in both patients treated with earlier-generation TKIs as well as those treated with third-generation TKIs. It also had some efficacy data and overall response rates of 63.2% vs 36.2%. Definitely, as we know, using a MET-targeted therapy is helpful. We already know from the United States that they use an approval in the second line of chemotherapy and amivantamab. 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Troubling Case Links Vaping to Aggressive Lung Cancer

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