This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Wednesday, May 21st. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 3 minutes, setting at 9:11, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:07. The Moon, 1 day past last quarter, will rise at 3:32 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. At 10 PM this evening two naked eye planets will be out. Jupiter, is now low in the west-northwestern sky. The rapidly fading Mars, with its distinctive reddish hue, is in the west-southwest, at that time. Once it’s darker binoculars can be used to spot the Beehive Star Cluster to its lower right. By 5 AM Venus will be seen very low in the east, as the Morning Star, with Saturn and the waning crescent Moon in an upward line to the right and a bit above it. Venus will require a low eastern horizon then. But it will rise and be visible until close to 5:45 or later. For those with telescopes, Saturn’s rings are now opening up again, and will for the next 7 years.
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. 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 21st, 2025. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.
Venus, Saturn and the waning crfescent Moon at 5 AM tomorrow morning, May 22nd, 2025, low in the east. Created using Stellarium.
The waning crescent Moon tomorrow morning, May 22nd, 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.
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 21, 2025. Its apparent diameter is 32.7″. Mars is 5.8″ in diameter, too small to be shown here. My lower size limit is 10″. Venus is shown in the morning of the 22nd. Its apparent diameter is 26.9″, and is 44.0% iluminated. Saturn is 16.6″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on may not be visible, but extend to 38.6″. They are 2.8 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 21, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 22nd. 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 21st and 22nd, 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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