This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, June 4th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 25 minutes, setting at 9:23, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:58. The Moon, 2 days past first quarter, will set at 2:57 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 then very low on the west-northwestern horizon, difficult or impossible to find. Fading Mars, with its distinctive reddish hue, is in the west-southwest, at that time, though better seen when the skies are darker. It’s slowly approaching the bright star Regulus in Leo the lion, which it will pass on June 16th. By 5 AM Venus will be seen very low in the east, as the Morning Star, with Saturn to the right in the east-southeast and above it. Venus will be visible until close to 5:40. For those with telescopes, Saturn’s rings are now slowly 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
Though Mercury and Jupiter are still in the evening sky, they are too close to the Sun to really be visible. Only Mars is left. It is approaching the star Regulus, which it will pass just north of on the 16th. The waxing gibbous Moon is entering Virgo tonight. Created using LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
The Moon tonight, June 4, 2025. 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 AM tomorrow morning, June 5th, 2025, low in the east. Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Saturn and Venus (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. Mars is 5.4″ in diameter, too small to be shown here. My lower size limit is 10″. On the morning of the 5th, Saturn is 16.9″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on should show up brighter than seen here., and extend to 39.5″. They are tlted 3.2° from being edge on. Venus’ apparent diameter is 22.7″, and is 51.8% iluminated. The ” means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on June 4, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 5th. 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, June 4th and 5th, 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.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 
