This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Wednesday, May 14th. Today the Sun will be up for 14 hours and 48 minutes, setting at 9:03, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:14. The Moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 11:41 this evening.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. At 10 PM this evening two of the five naked eye planets will be out. Jupiter, is now the brightest evening planet, our substitute evening star if you will. It will be in the low in the west-northwestern sky. The rapidly fading Mars, with its distinctive reddish hue, is in the west-southwest, less than a binocular field’s width east of the Beehive Star Cluster in Cancer the Crab. By 5 AM Venus will be seen very low in the east, as the Morning Star. It will require a low eastern horizon. It should be visible until close to 6 AM. Saturn is visible to the right and a bit above Venus. It will disappear much sooner than the much brighter Venus.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Event times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
The evening planets Jupiter and Mars seen with the fading stars of winter at 10 PM, on May 14th, 2025. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.
The Moon tomorrow morning, May 15, 2025, in its orientation at 5 AM. A view visible in small telescopes showing an image with and without selected features labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Venus and Saturn at 5:15 AM tomorrow morning, May 15th, 2025, low in the east. Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Jupiter, Venus and Saturn (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. Jupiter is shown for tonight, 10 PM, May 15, 2025. Its apparent diameter is 33.0″. Mars is 6.1″ in diameter, too small to be shown here. My lower size limit is 10″. Venus is shown in the morning of May 8th. Its apparent diameter is 29.5″, and is 39.5% iluminated. Saturn is 16.4″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on may not be visible. They are 2.6 degrees from being edge on and barely illuminated. Planetary surface detail is more subtle than shown here. The ” means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on May 14, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 15th. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, May 14th and May 15th, 2025. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others are not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
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