This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, June 11th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 31 minutes, setting at 9:28, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:56. The Moon, at full today, will rise at 10:31 this evening.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. Only one naked eye planet will be visible in the evening sky. That is reddish Mars, now approaching the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo the lion, which it will pass just north of next Monday evening, June 16th. Both are seen in the western sky. They are currently about the same brightness, but Mars has an orange-reddish hue, while Regulus, to the left, is white. By 5 AM Venus will be seen very low in the east, as the Morning Star, with Saturn to the right and above it in the east-southeast. 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
Mars and Regulus this evening near 10:30 PM, June 11, 2025. Created using Stellarium and LibreOffice Draw.
The Moon just 20 hours after being full, the sunset terminator is beginning to fill craters with shadows to the upper right of the Moon. Selected features are labeled. Created using Stellarium , labels from Virtual Moon Atlas, added using LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
Venus and Saturn at 5 AM tomorrow morning, June 12th, 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 5.2″ in diameter, too small to be shown here. My lower size limit is 10″. On the morning of the 12th, Saturn is 17.1″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on should show up brighter than seen here., and extend to 40.0″. They are tilted 3.4° from being edge on. Venus’ apparent diameter is 21.1″, and is 55.4% illuminated. 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 11, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 12th. 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 11th and 12th, 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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