This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, June 18th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 34 minutes, setting at 9:31, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:56. The Moon, at last quarter today, will rise at 1:55 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. The Red Planet Mars, will be seen just to the upper left of the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo the lion. Both are seen in the western sky by 10:30 PM at least. They are currently about the same brightness, but Mars has an orange-reddish hue, while Regulus, is blue-white. They are a good color contrast, especially in binoculars which will increase their brightness. Even before 5 AM Venus will be seen very low in the east, as the Morning Star. The waning crescent Moon will be near Saturn, having passed it around midnight. By 5 AM Saturn will be to the right and below it. Venus will be visible until close to 5:40.
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 with other bright stars in the western sky near 10:30 PM, June 18, 2025. Mercury is seen here, but will probably be invisible from my latitude. The farther south one goes, at least to the equator, the higher Mercury will appear. Created using Stellarium and LibreOffice Draw for the captions.
Venus, Saturn and the waining crescent Moon at 5 AM tomorrow morning, June 19th, 2025, in the east. Created using Stellarium.
The Moon just 14 hours after last quarter. Selected features are labeled. Created using Stellarium, labels from Virtual Moon Atlas, added using LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
Telescopic Saturn and Venus (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. On the evening of June 18, 2025, Mars is 5.1″ in diameter, too small to be shown here. My lower size limit is 10″. On the morning of the 19th, Saturn is 17.4″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on should show up brighter than seen here., and extend to 40.4″. They are tilted 3.5° from being edge on. Venus’ apparent diameter is 19.7″, and is 58.6% 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 18, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 19th. 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 18th and 19th, 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 
