Watch: Large fireball seen shooting across sky over Southeastern US
A meteorite that crashed into a home in the US is older than planet Earth, scientists have said.
The object flew through the skies in broad daylight before exploding across the state of Georgia on 26 June, Nasa confirmed.
Researchers at the University of Georgia examined a fragment of the rock that pierced the roof of a home in the city of McDonough.
They found that, based on the type of meteorite, it is expected to have formed more than four billion years ago, making it older than Earth.
Residents in Georgia and nearby states reported hundreds of sightings and a loud booming noise when the fireball tore through the skies.
The rock quickly diminished in size and speed, but still travelled at least 1 km per second, going through a man’s roof in Henry County.
Multiple fragments that struck the building were handed over to scientists, who analysed their origins.
“This particular meteor that entered the atmosphere has a long history before it made it to the ground of McDonough,” Scott Harris, a geologist at the University of Georgia, said.
Using optical and electron microscopy, Harris and his team determined the rock was a chondrite – the most abundant type of stony meteorite, according to Nasa – which meant that it was approximately 4.5 billion years old.
The home’s resident said he is still finding pieces of space dust around his home from the hit.
The object, which has been named the McDonough meteorite, is the 27th to have been recovered from Georgia.
“This is something that used to be expected once every few decades and not multiple times within 20 years,” Harris said.
“Modern technology, in addition to an attentive public, is going to help us recover more and more meteorites.”
Harris is hoping to publish his findings on the composition and speed of the asteroid, which will help to understand the threat of further asteroids.
“One day there will be an opportunity, and we never know when it’s going to be, for something large to hit and create a catastrophic situation. If we can guard against that, we want to,” he said.
A study led by Charles-Édouard Boukaré of York University, published in Nature Astronomy, has developed a framework for decoding the interiors and atmospheres of lava planets. By combining geophysics, atmospheric science and mineral chemistry, the team used numerical models to simulate how molten rock, vapour, and solid crust interact over immense timescales. The models suggest two end-member interior states: fully molten young planets, where heat circulates efficiently, and older ones that have partly solidified, with distinct chemical differences between their magma oceans and atmospheres.
Convert Voyager speed to AU per year (digit-by-digit)
Seconds per year = 86,400 × 365.25 = 31,557,600 s.
Distance per year = 17 km/s × 31,557,600 s = 536,479,200 km/year.
Convert to AU: 536,479,200 km ÷ 149,597,870.7 km/AU ≈ 3.586 AU/year.
So Voyager 1 travels about 3.6 AU per year.
Now the times for different Oort Cloud radii
(We divide distance in AU by 3.586 AU/year to get years.)
If the feature is at 1,000 AU: Time = 1,000 ÷ 3.586 ≈ 279 years. (This is roughly where a few sources place an inner Oort-like region in some estimates — hence the ~300-year figure.)
If the inner Oort Cloud (Hills cloud) is at 2,000 AU: Time = 2,000 ÷ 3.586 ≈ 558 years.
If the outer edge is at 100,000 AU: Time = 100,000 ÷ 3.586 ≈ 27,900 years (≈ 28,000 years). Many popular summaries round that to ~30,000 years, which is the figure you saw earlier for Voyager passing beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud.
I’ve done everything I can think of to improve my mindfulness. I’ve tried countless meditation apps and breathing exercises to stay in the present, and I’m always working on improving my mental health.
What helps me stay grounded has nothing to do with any of that. It’s an app for identifying birds.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin Bird ID launched in 2014 to help people identify the birds they see and hear. Thanks to eBird, the world’s largest database of bird sounds and photos based on 800 million global sightings, the app allows you to record a bird, answer a series of questions or upload a photo to name your winged friend. Or you can simply use the app to explore the different birds in your area, no matter where you are in the world, and even if you’re offline.
The app’s homepage, with three avenues for identification.
Anna Gragert/CNET
One of my favorite features of Merlin Bird ID is that you can use it to keep track of your bird sightings and, like an IRL Pokemon GO, “collect ’em all.”
The first time I used the app, I sat out on my balcony, clicked the green “Sound” button and watched as the app identified the birds chirping and singing in all directions. You can see the different sound frequencies as they appear on a real-time spectrogram, a visual representation of the audio world. The next time I checked the clock, I was shocked to see that an hour had passed. Then, I dug out my binoculars and let even more time fly.
What a spectrogram on the app looks like.
Anna Gragert/CNET
As any Merlin Bird IDer knows, there is no thrill quite like pressing the “This is my bird” button for the first time, and it never gets old. From there, you can record your location. The app, in turn, will save your report to improve its performance.
Before long, I had different bird sounds memorized. In the morning, I would wake to the sound of a California Towhee’s alarm-like and frankly, yes, annoying cheeping from a tree outside my window right as the sun started to rise. On walks around my neighborhood, I’d auditorially part the sound of cars and distant construction to hear the melody of House Finches mixed with staccato chirps of Lesser Goldfinches and the droning coos from a pair of Mourning Doves religiously stationed on electrical wires. It was the song that had been the soundtrack of my world, but I hadn’t noticed until now.
By sight, I’d recognize Red-Whiskered Bulbuls with their black crests and fire engine cheeks, a blush color waiting to be replicated in powder form. Black Phoebes made themselves known with their fluffy soot-black heads, statue stillness and ivory bellies. At the hummingbird feeder on my balcony, there is a never-ending line of customers with iridescent throats in sunset colors: Anna’s Hummingbirds (my favorite, as you might guess), Allen’s and even the uncommon Rufous, who spend all day fighting over sugar water when not watching the feeder from their magnolia tree perches.
A customer at our feeder. I think they’re an Allen’s Hummingbird.
Anna Gragert/CNET
What’s most thrilling is when the Merlin Bird app hears a bird that you can’t see, making it feel as though it’s your mission to treasure hunt your way to it. This is often a lesson in patience, as it may take you several tries to find the songbird you seek. Recently, while sitting in a new-to-me park, the app told me a Mountain Chickadee was nearby and I spent the next 45 minutes trying to spot it with my binoculars. It ended up on a branch directly above my head, and when I got up to leave, it flew down right by my face as if in on the joke that it was there the whole time.
I’ve yet to find the Red-Winged Blackbird who always seems to be just out of reach, no matter where I am in my city, but I console myself with the seemingly all-knowing flock of Common Ravens (also unjustly called an “unkindness”) evermore on my street and the surprising number of noises they can produce.
Birds I haven’t spotted … yet.
Anna Gragert/CNET
I also often listen back to the comforting hoo-hoos of a Great Horned Owl singing a 9:30 p.m. lullaby right before the start of spring. I like time-travelling to these moments, though I have come across some retrospectively hilarious conversations I unintentionally recorded in between birdsong. With that being said, Merlin Bird ID does save your audio recordings but only on your device in the app. To share the recordings with eBird, you have to manually export and upload them.
I now seek out unexplored wooded spaces to meet new feathered friends, an excuse for forest bathing, which has led me to see the shade of blue unique to a Ruddy Duck’s bill. After a rainstorm, I’ve come across a group of Acorn Woodpeckers with impressive red mohawks excitedly pecking wet, softened wood while calling to each other. Like a conversation between punk besties over dinner. My area is known for its large flocks of Amazon parrots (and their persistent screeches), whom I’ve now had the pleasure of seeing up close as they use their light yellow bills to climb trees and collect their berries. And once, just once, I caught the backside of a Yellow Warbler in a nearby watershed park.
The Acorn Woodpecker
Anna Gragert/CNET
Because of this app, I’ve spent more time listening to the world around me and less time in my own head, bobbing between the past and future. I’ve found myself surrounded by and in conversation with nature more than ever before. It may be the closest thing we have to magic here on Earth. Now, perhaps that is the key to grounding yourself: Getting your butt on the ground and taking the time to listen to those who are singing around you.
A simple way to distinguish a spacecraft from a rock is through its large non-gravitational acceleration. A natural icy rock like a comet is propelled by its mass loss. That mass loss can be observed through the cometary plume of gas and dust that surrounds the comet’s nucleus. By measuring the rate of mass loss and the characteristic ejection speed of gas and dust, one can calculate the rate of momentum change per unit time, or the non-gravitational force exerted on the nucleus. Since the evaporation occurs on the dayside of the rock which is warmed up by the virtue of it facing the Sun, this force pushes the comet’s nucleus away from the Sun. At a large enough distance, typically a few times the Earth-Sun separation, the surface of the nucleus is not warmed enough by sunlight to release volatile ices and dust and the cometary activity diminishes.
A technological object, on the other hand, could operate an engine and maneuver independently of the Sun. It can be propelled towards the Sun or any planet of interest and exhibit a non-gravitational acceleration of arbitrary magnitude or direction. Observing non-gravitational maneuvers could shift the ranking of an interstellar object on the “Loeb scale”, from `0’ — the default value for a natural comet to `10’ — a definitely artificial object.
Given this perspective, it is of great interest to measure the acceleration of the new interstellar object 3I/ATLAS along its path through the Solar System and check whether it shows any deviation from the expected trajectory, as dictated by gravity alone. If 3I/ATLAS will not continue along its expected path after its closest approach to the Sun on October 29, 2025, then the stock market might crash from worries about an alien tech visitation.
If 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, what is its expected non-gravitational acceleration?
The recent imaging of 3I/ATLAS by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a glow ahead of the object but no bright tail of gas and dust behind it — as often observed for comets (see related paper here). In addition, spectroscopic measurements show no evidence for molecular or atomic gas accompanying this glow (see related papers here, here and here, as well as the discussion about water ice here). A natural interpretation of these anomalies is that 3I/ATLAS is a dust-rich comet that releases little gas, but mostly large dust particles which are not pushed back by Solar radiation pressure or the Solar wind because of their small surface-to-mass ratio. In this case, we can calculate the expected non-gravitational acceleration of this comet from the observed plume of dust leading it.
A detailed analysis of the observed glow ahead of 3I/ATLAS (see related paper here) suggests a mass loss rate of up to 60 kilograms per second for dust particles of 100 micron size (where a micron is a millionth of a meter) and an ejection speed of ~2 meters per second in the direction of the Sun. The estimated mass loss rate drops to 6 kilograms per second and an ejection speed of 20 meters per second for 1-micron particles. Since the non-gravitational force exerted on 3I/ATLAS equals the mass loss rate times the ejection speed, its value is the same in both cases and does not depend on the assumed size of the ejected dust particles.
The brightness distribution in the glow preceding 3I/ATLAS was also used to set limits on the diameter of its nucleus, inferred to be in the range of 0.32–5.6 kilometers. This implies that the nucleus mass is in the range of 30 billion to 200 trillion kilograms. Applying the resulting non-gravitational force to this mass leads to a non-gravitational acceleration in the range of 3×10^{-14} to 2×10^{-10} AU per day squared, where AU stands for Astronomical Unit which is defined as the Earth-Sun separation. This non-gravitational acceleration range is equivalent to values between 6×10^{-11} and 4×10^{-7} centimeters per second squared, in the direction away from the Sun.
For comparison, the first interstellar object 1I/`Oumuamua exhibited on October 25, 2017 a non-gravitational acceleration of 1.4×10^{-7} AU per day squared, equivalent to 2.7×10^{-4} centimeters per second squared (see related data here). This is larger than the expected non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS by a huge factor, ranging between a thousand and 10 million. If 1I/`Oumuamua was a familiar comet, it had to lose about a tenth of its mass during its passage close to the Sun. But despite its large non-gravitational acceleration, 1I/`Oumuamua did not display any cometary evaporation (see observational data here), making its large non-gravitational acceleration a major anomaly concerning its nature (as argued in my related paper here).
If 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, its outgassing may intensify as it gets closer to the Sun. A measurement of the expected non-gravitational from its cometary activity would confirm its natural origin. A paper that I wrote with my student, Sriram Elango, before the discovery of 3I/ATLAS, showed that localization data from the Webb telescope in combination with terrestrial telescopes can pinpoint the trajectory of an interstellar object to unprecedented precision using parallax, since the Webb telescope is located 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth at the L2 Lagrange point. A major deviation of the measured non-gravitational acceleration from the expected range for a comet, would suggest that 3I/ATLAS might be propelled technologically.
For now, we cannot assess with any confidence whether 3I/ATLAS is a natural dust-rich comet with no gaseous tail on an extremely rare trajectory, or perhaps a technological object on a path that was designed to align with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun. All we know is that 3I/ATLAS exhibits a rare (0.2% probability) alignment of its retrograde path with the ecliptic plane to within 5 degrees, and its arrival time along this path is perfectly suited for a close encounter with Mars, Venus and Jupiter (with a 0.0005% probability, as discussed here). These coincidences would allow a mothership to release mini-probes that will reach planets as they move into the mini-probes’ orbits, taking advantage of the mothership’s retrograde motion. Since 3I/ATLAS will hide behind the Sun at its perihelion on October 29, 2025, we will not be able to observe whether it releases any mini-probes into Earth’s orbit.
Exquisite measurements of the non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/ATLAS would provide an important clue about its nature. The verdict will not be decided by debates on social media, but rather by accurate measurements of instruments. This is the same as the video assisted referee (VAR) protocol used by FIFA to decide whether a goal was scored under controversial circumstances. FIFA rules by viewing data recorded by cameras, rather than by asking soccer players or the goalkeeper for their opinions. We all know that the Earth moved around the Sun for 4.54 billion years before the Vatican placed Galileo Galilei in house arrest for suggesting that. Whether 3I/ATLAS is natural or technological in origin has nothing to do with popular opinions on Earth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial:The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
August’s full moon, known as the ‘Sturgeon Moon’ made a splash when it leapt above the southern horizon on Aug. 9 earlier this week, illuminating the summer sky mere days before the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
The Sturgeon Moon gets its name from the large lake fish that were once abundant around this time of year and which served as an important source of food for several Native American tribes. It’s also sometimes known as the ‘Red Moon’, on account of the ruddy hue it has been known to adopt in the summer haze, while the Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes knew it as the ‘Ricing Moon’ and used it as a sign that it was time to bring in the harvest.
Some photographers aimed their lenses at the moon during moonrise, capturing its dramatic yellow-orange glow as Earth’s atmosphere scattered the bluer wavelengths of sunlight in a process known as Rayleigh Scattering. Others snapped the moon as it tracked a low path through the summer sky, recording spectacular detail on the lunar surface, while lining up impressive shots that blended the ancient and the new in a single frame.
Read on to see a selection of some of the best August full moon photos from around the world.
The August 2025 full Sturgeon Moon in pictures
This stunning view of the full Sturgeon Moon suspended between New York’s iconic skyscrapers was taken by Nazli Zeynep Karabulut on the night of Aug. 9, as the lunar disk rose over New York and was temporarily speared by the point of the Empire State Building.
August’s full moon is pictured rising over the Manhattan skyline. (Image credit: Photo by Nazli Zeynep Karabulut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Ismael Adnan Yaqoob captured the moon thousands of miles from New York as it drifted close to the lights of an amusement park in the city of Mosul, Iraq on the same night (Aug. 9).
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The full Sturgeon Moon seen rising from an amusement park in Iraq. (Image credit: Photo by Ismael Adnan Yaqoob/Anadolu via Getty Images)
This stunningly detailed high-contrast view of the lunar disk was captured on Aug. 9 by Tayfun Coskun as the moon hung above Mt. Hamilton in San Jose, California. Dark lunar seas can be seen scarring the lunar surface alongside sweeping mountain ranges and prominent impact sites, including the majestic form of Tycho Crater, which dominates the lower region of the moon’s disk.
A detailed shot of the moon taken by Tayfun Coskun in August 2025. (Image credit: Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Photographer Riccardo De Luca captured a beautiful shot of the orange-red Sturgeon Moon as it rose above the historic Colosseum in Rome, with the towering Arch of Titus illuminated to the right of the image.
The full moon is pictured rising above the Colosseum in Rome. (Image credit: Photo by Riccardo De Luca/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Isa Terli’s moody composition featured a potent mix of the old and the new by capturing the red form of the rising Sturgeon Moon as it hung between the supports of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey.
The August 2025 full moon seen rising between the supports of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey. (Image credit: Photo by Isa Terli/Anadolu via Getty Images)
This image of the yellow full moon rising near the ancient temple of Poseidon in southern Greece was captured on Aug. 9, by photographer Costas Baltas, close to the city of Athens.
A yellow full moon pictured rising next to the Temple of Poseidon near Athens. (Image credit: Photo by Costas Baltas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
A spotlight shone from the tip of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, appears to pick out the orange form of the rising Sturgeon Moon in this dramatic composition by Mustafa Yalcin, also taken on Aug. 9.
The full moon caught in a spotlight shone from the pinnacle of the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. (Image credit: Photo by Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Lorenzo Di Cola snapped a shot of the lunar disk rising over the ruins of Rocca Calascio on Aug. 8, in the runup to the full moon from the Province of L’Aquila, Abruzzo in Italy.
An orange moon is pictured rising above the ruined castle Rocca Calascio in Italy. (Image credit: Photo by Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Photographer Yasin Akgul captured the Sturgeon Moon warped by atmospheric disturbance on Aug. 9, as it loomed above the rooftops of Istanbul, Turkey, close to the famous Galata Tower.
The Sturgeon Moon imaged on Aug. 9 2025 rising over the rooftops of Istanbul, Turkey. (Image credit: Photo by Yasin AKGUL / AFP) (Photo by YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images)
Faisal Bashir took a stunningly detailed shot of the lunar disk on Aug. 8, ahead of the full moon phase, framed by the delicate silhouettes of overhanging leaves.
The August moon captured a day before its full moon phase in the sky over Kashmir. (Image credit: Photo by Faisal Bashir/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Photographer Max Guliani also posted a series of impressive moonrise shots to his X account, showing the full lunar disk looming large between the iconic skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan.
The Full Sturgeon Moon rising over Midtown Manhattan from across the Hudson River #NYC pic.twitter.com/ycZph4faFOAugust 9, 2025
Gary Hershorn, meanwhile, lined up a slew of shots that featured the full moon resplendent alongside the Statue of Liberty, including one well-timed composition that captured a passenger jet traversing the lunar disk.
The full Sturgeon Moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Saturday evening #newyorkcity #nyc #newyork #statueofliberty #fullmoon #moon #SturgeonMoon @statueellisfdn pic.twitter.com/kBkIP40g8xAugust 10, 2025
While there’s no doubt that August’s Sturgeon Moon put on a dramatic show, next month’s full moon phase is set to be even more spectacular. Sept. 7-8 will see a total lunar eclipse sweep over the surface of Earth’s natural satellite, temporarily transforming it into a red “blood moon” for skywatchers in Asia, Australia, Europe and Africa. You can keep up with all the lunar eclipse action with our lunar eclipse live blog.
Editor’s Note: If you capture an image of the full Sturgeon Moon and want to share it with Space.com’s readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
Monday evening (Aug. 11) offers a perfect chance to identify what many consider the most beautiful object in the night sky: the ringed planet Saturn. Helping guide the way, will be another familiar celestial companion, the moon, shining in its waning gibbous phase.
As I’ve pointed out over the years here at Space.com, to the naked eye, Saturn does not exactly scream for attention. It lacks the dazzling, eye-popping brilliance of Venus or Jupiter and it does not have the fiery orange-yellow color of Mars.
In fact, to the eye, Saturn appears to be nothing more than a bright “star” that shines with a yellowish-white glow. Most people looking around the current midsummer sky might take note of it as they look low toward the eastern horizon at around 10:30 p.m. local daylight time, but not knowing they are looking at the solar system’s ringed wonder.
But on Monday, the moon will make it easier to spot as it will be situated to the upper right of Saturn.
If it is clear, that evening will be a great night to invite your friends and neighbors over to peer through your eyepiece at both Saturn and our nearest neighbor in space, two wonderful sky objects.
View of the moon and Saturn at approximately 11 p.m. local time on Aug. 11 (Image credit: Created in Canva Pro by Daisy Dobrijevic)
After you are done showing off the moon to your friends, it will then be time to turn your telescope toward Saturn. It’ll be located about 5 degrees, roughly “half a fist” at arm’s length, to the lower left of the moon.
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A final “gee-whiz” fact you can reveal to your friends is that what you are seeing in Monday’s sky is an illusion of perspective. The moon and Saturn are nowhere near each other in space. The moon will be 230,000 miles (370,000 km) from Earth, while Saturn is more than 3,500 times farther away at 816 million miles (1.31 billion km).
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers’ Almanac and other publications. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook
What it is: The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, revisited by the James Webb Space Telescope
Where it is: Close to the Big Dipper in the night sky
When it was shared: Aug. 1, 2025
TheJames Webb Space Telescope‘s (JWST) latest extragalactic survey has revealed fainter and more distant objects than ever before, some dating back to the earliest periods of the universe. But it stands on the shoulders of a giant: When NASA published the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image in 2004, it stunned the world of astronomy. A composite of 800 images from exposures totaling 11 days, the deep image of an otherwise unremarkable part of the night sky revealed nearly 10,000 galaxies, many among the most distant known.
Now, JWST has observed that same patch of sky with different eyes — and found 2,500 more objects. Crucially, they’re even more distant.
JWST’s new take on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, named the MIRI Deep Imaging Survey (MIDIS), is the deepest-ever mid-infrared image of that part of the night sky.
The extraordinary new image is the result of nearly 100 hours of observing time using the space observatory’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). It includes hundreds of extremely red galaxies, some of which may date back to less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
Related: 42 jaw-dropping James Webb Space Telescope images
At the core of the composite image is one ultralong exposure. Using just one of MIRI’s filters, JWST took an exposure of the night sky for 41 hours — the longest single-filter observation it has performed of an extragalactic field to date. The plan was to capture galaxies in mid-infrared light — something neither Hubble nor human eyes can detect — which also revealed previously unseen regions of dust and old, red stars.
Capturing light in wavelengths beyond the capabilities of human vision always brings a problem: How can we even begin to look at it? Processing such images requires filters that assign a different color to each different wavelength of light. In this image, galaxies rich in dust and star-forming activity are orange and red, extremely distant compact galaxies are greenish, and galaxies bright in the near-infrared are blue and cyan.
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Researchers described the image in a paper in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, along with a slider tool, a pan video and a transition video with the Hubble Ultra Deep Field for comparison.
For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.
Hydrogen-rich white dwarfs can appear deceptively ordinary in optical light, making their true origin difficult to determine. Ultraviolet data is crucial because it can detect the faint carbon signatures that betray a merger history. Without Hubble’s ultraviolet capability, WD 0525+526 would likely have been classified as a typical white dwarf, masking the fact that it is the product of a violent stellar collision. WD 0525+526, zombie star, ultra-massive white dwarf, Hubble Space Telescope, NASA, James Webb Space Telescope, star merger, binary star evolution, stellar collision, ultraviolet astronomy, carbon signature, hydrogen-rich atmosphere, semi-convection, University of Warwick, Nature Astronomy, stellar remnant, neutron star, gamma-ray burst, post-merger evolution, massive white dwarf, stellar death
Early risers this month can see a “planet parade” building in the eastern sky before sunrise featuring Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Mercury. Best seen about an hour before sunrise, on Monday, Aug. 11, Saturn will be visible in the south, with bright planets Jupiter and Venus in the east. Mercury may also be glimpsed below Venus and Jupiter as sunrise nears, but the “Swift Planet” will be easier to see later this week. Uranus and Neptune will also be in the sky — making a six-planet parade — but neither is visible to the naked eye.
A spectacular “planet parade” (also called an alignment) featuring six planets is visible during August 2025.
getty
Key Facts
About an hour before sunrise, Venus and Jupiter — the two brightest planets in the solar system — will appear to be very close to each other, while Saturn will be easily visible in the southern sky.
The highlight of this week’s “planet parade” will come on Tuesday, Aug. 12, when the two planets will be just 0.9 degrees apart. Jupiter will be on the left, slightly higher in the sky than Venus.
Mercury will join the “planet parade” on or around Tuesday, Aug. 12, according to Sky & Telescope, becoming visible just above the eastern horizon about 45 minutes before sunrise. It will be farthest from the sun — so highest in the sky — on Aug. 19 and remain visible until around Aug. 26.
Saturn is currently brightening as it nears its annual bright “opposition” on Sept. 21, when Earth will be between Saturn and the sun.
The next “planet parade” isn’t until October 2028, when five planets will be visible together before sunrise.
The planets an hour before sunrise on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, during the “planet parade.”
Stellarium
Watch For Early ‘shooting Stars’
If you’re outside while it’s dark — or you return after dark later in the day — keep your eyes peeled for “shooting stars” from the Perseid meteor shower. It peaks overnight on Tuesday, Aug. 12 through Wednesday, Aug. 13, when 50-75 “shooting stars” are typically visible each hour, with activity high on the nights either side. Bright moonlight will restrict visibility this year, but the Perseids are known for their occasional very bright fireballs.
What’s Next In The ‘planet Parade’
This “planet parade” will become more visible and easier to see as the days pass during August. After this week’s Venus-Jupiter conjunction, Mercury will become easier to see as it rises higher. Next week, as Mercury reaches its highest point in the morning sky, a waning crescent moon will move through the planets, creating a beautiful scene. Here are the key dates:
Monday, Aug. 18: A 26% crescent moon will glow near Venus and Jupiter.
Tuesday, Aug. 19: Mercury will be at its highest in the morning sky as the moon wanes to 16%-lit and forms a curve with Venus and Jupiter.
Wednesday, Aug. 20: A 9%-lit crescent moon will appear very close to Venus, with Mercury below and Jupiter above:
Thursday, Aug. 21: a slender 4%-lit waning crescent moon will be beneath Jupiter and Venus, close to Mercury.
What’s Next In The Night Sky
The “planet parade” will draw to a close around Aug. 26 as Mercury disappears from view, leaving Saturn and Jupiter to gradually brighten as Venus begins to fade. However, Venus has one last act — before sunrise on Aug. 31, it will pass across the Beehive Cluster, one of the closest open clusters of stars to the solar system, which should be a fabulous sight through binoculars.
Further Reading
ForbesA Six-Planet Parade Is Coming — When To See ItBy Jamie CarterForbesPerseid Meteor Shower Begins Next Week — When To Get The Best ViewBy Jamie CarterForbesDon’t Miss This Week’s Dazzling Venus-Jupiter EncounterBy Jamie Carter
