When And Where To See June's Stargazing Highlight On Monday
A crescent Moon with the Pleiades below-right.
If you're up early on Monday, June 23, you'll be rewarded with one of the most elegant sights the sky has to offer this month — a slender crescent moon close to a sparkling cluster of stars called the Pleiades. Here's everything you need to know about when and where to see them.
Where And When To Look
This is a celestial encounter that lacks convenience. To see it, you'll need to head outside about an hour before sunrise and look toward the east-northeast horizon. As the sky lightens into dawn, you'll see a slender 6%-illuminated waning crescent moon. Just above it will be the Pleiades — also known as the Seven Sisters or Messier 45 — barely half a degree away. That's less than the width of an outstretched little finger held against the sky. You'll also see Venus to the right of the pair, shining brilliantly at magnitude -4.1.
Monday, June 23: Crescent Moon And The Pleiades
What You'll See
The moon won't be particularly easy to see at first, thanks to only a slither of it being lit by the sun — you may need binoculars to spot it. If you need help, first find Venus, then look to its lower-left, slightly closer to the horizon. Once you do find it, you may notice its darkened night side softly illuminated by Earthshine — sunlight reflecting off our planet's oceans, clouds and ice caps. Just above it and to the right, the Pleiades will sparkle like glitter, with six or seven stars visible to the naked eye (and many more through binoculars).
While the moon is about 238,000 miles away and Venus is about 150 times farther, the stars of the Pleiades lie roughly 444 light-years from Earth.
What you won't see is Uranus. Despite it being about halfway between the moon and Venus, it's far too small to see with anything other than a large telescope.
Earthshine on the crescent moon. (Photo by Frederic Larson/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Observing Tips
Most people immediately think of a telescope when they think about astronomy. It's not necessary for this event. You'll see much more just by using your naked eyes. However, a pair of binoculars is always useful when stargazing, allowing you to zoom in on the Pleiades and on the Earthshine-lit lunar surface.
Choose an observing location with a clear, unobstructed view to the eastern horizon, if possible, away from city lights — though light pollution makes zero difference when observing the planets and the moon.
What's Next In The Night Sky
The next standout event comes on June 25 with the arrival of a new moon — a prime opportunity to see the Milky Way in all its summer glory. And don't miss June 26, when a young crescent moon will join Mercury in the western post-sunset sky.
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.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
If Your Baby Seems Kinda Dumb at Seven Months, Scientists Have Terrible News About What'll Happen When It Grows Into an Adult
Next time you see your baby trying to play or talk, pay close attention — because it may give you a strong clue about how intelligent the kiddo will turn out as an adult, according to a new paper in the journal PNAS. A team of scientists led by the University of Colorado Boulder have found that cognitive tests on babies as young as seven months can anticipate their future performance as 30-year-old adults on intelligence tests. "We certainly do not want to imply that cognition is somehow fixed by seven months old," said first author Daniel Gustavson, an assistant research professor at the university's Institute for Behavioral Genetics, in a statement. "But the idea that a very simple test in infancy can help predict the results of a very complicated cognitive test taken 30 years later is exciting." But all isn't lost if your baby seems slow on the uptake right now: the scientists also determined that environmental factors have an impact on childhood development. The researchers examined data from the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study, which was started in 1985 and involved more than 1,000 twins who were followed since they were babies in order to study the impact of genes and environment. Previous research has already found that general cognitive ability doesn't shift much after a kid is eight years old or so, but this team wanted to investigate if this was also true starting from when children are very young. The researchers looked at several metrics to assess cognitive ability in babies, such as the focus and vocalization found in baby babbles. From these yardsticks, they determined that two metrics — object novelty and task orientation — strongly predicted the cognitive abilities of the tykes once they hit adulthood. They also compared identical and fraternal twins, from which they determined that 22 percent of the variance in adult cognitive ability was connected with genetic influences present in children three years of age or younger. However, they also found out that environmental influences when a child was one or two years old could explain 10 percent of variability in adult cognitive tests. Perhaps this finding will dispel the notion that genes have a total monopoly on intelligence, especially in light of right wing activists recently glomming onto race science and IQ. After all, the human brain is complex; if you feel dumb, maybe you just haven't found the right type of task yet. More on babies: The World Birth Rate Is Now Dropping Precipitously
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Senate Can Keep Ban on State AI Rules in Trump Tax Bill
A Republican effort to block US states from enforcing new artificial intelligence regulations will remain in President Donald Trump's massive tax and spending package for now, marking a win for tech companies pushing to stall and override dozens of AI safety laws across the country. In a surprise decision, Democrats said the Senate parliamentarian ruled the provision aligns with the special budgetary process Republicans are using to consider the tax package. That process allows the GOP to avoid making concessions to Democrats, who otherwise could filibuster legislation.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Parkinson's Discovery Suggests We Could Have an FDA-Approved Treatment Already
Researchers have discovered how a surface protein on brain cells, called Aplp1, can play a role in spreading material responsible for Parkinson's disease from cell to cell in the brain. Promisingly, an FDA-approved cancer drug that targets another protein – Lag3 – which interacts with Aplp1 – was found to block this process in mice. This suggests a potential treatment for Parkinson's may already exist. In a paper published last year, an international team of scientists detailed how the two proteins work together to help toxic clumps of alpha-synuclein protein get into brain cells. "Now that we know how Aplp1 and Lag3 interact, we have a new way of understanding how alpha-synuclein contributes to the disease progression of Parkinson's disease," neuroscientist Xiaobo Mao from Johns Hopkins University said in June 2024. "Our findings also suggest that targeting this interaction with drugs could significantly slow the progression of Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases." More than 8.5 million people globally have Parkinson's, the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's. The disease is progressive and currently incurable, and it's usually only diagnosed when symptoms show. These include tremors, stiffness, balance issues, speech difficulties, disturbed sleep patterns, and mental health issues. In advanced stages, patients may eventually struggle to walk or speak. Most Parkinson's symptoms stem from the loss or dysfunction of dopamine-producing neurons in a brain region involved in fine motor control, called the substantia nigra. This is thought to be caused by Lewy bodies – abnormal clumps of protein, primarily made up of misfolded alpha-synuclein, that move from neuron to neuron. Although alpha-synuclein normally helps neurons communicate, when it misfolds and becomes insoluble, it can cause serious damage. That said, identifying whether this is a cause of Parkinson's or a symptom is difficult. Past studies on mice found Lag3 binds to alpha-synuclein proteins and spreads Parkinson's disease pathology in neurons. While deleting Lag3 significantly impedes this process, it does not completely prevent it, indicating another protein was also implicated in neurons taking in misfolded alpha-synuclein. "Our work previously demonstrated that Lag3 wasn't the only cell surface protein that helped neurons absorb alpha-synuclein, so we turned to Aplp1 in our most recent experiments," said Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Valina Dawson. The scientists conducted tests with genetically modified mice that were missing either Aplp1 or Lag3, or both. They found Aplp1 and Lag3 can each independently help brain cells absorb harmful alpha-synuclein, but together they significantly increase the uptake. When mice were missing both Aplp1 and Lag3, 90 percent less of the harmful alpha-synuclein entered healthy brain cells, meaning a greater amount of the harmful protein clumps was blocked with both proteins missing compared with a deletion of just one. The researchers gave normal mice the drug nivolumab/relatlimab, a melanoma medication that contains a Lag3 antibody, and found that it also stopped Aplp1 and Lag3 from interacting, again almost completely blocking the formation of disease-causing alpha-synuclein clumps in neurons. "The anti-Lag3 antibody was successful in preventing further spread of alpha-synuclein seeds in the mouse models and exhibited better efficacy than Lag3-depletion because of Aplp1's close association with Lag3," said Ted Dawson, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University. The next step will be to test the Lag3 antibody on mouse models of Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's – where research has pointed to Lag3 as a target too. The research has been published in Nature Communications. An earlier version of this article was published in June 2024. Microplastics Have a Concerning Effect on The Microbes in Our Gut Something in Your Poop May Predict an Imminent Death Long-Term Contraceptive Pill Use Linked With Brain Tumor Risk
