This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, June 25th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 34 minutes, setting at 9:32, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:58. The Moon is new today, and won’t be visible.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. The Red Planet Mars, will be seen 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. At that time Mercury might be spotted low on the west-northwestern Lake Michigan horizon. This is not a favorable appearance of Mercury. Jupiter passed conjunction with the Sun yesterday, but it will be nearly a month before it will appear in our morning sky. Venus will rise at 3:34 AM in the east northeast, and by 5 AM will be seen low in the east, as the Morning Star. By then Saturn will be in the southeast, having risen 2 hours earlier.
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 Mercury and other bright stars in the western sky near 10:30 PM, June 25, 2025. Mercury is seen here, but will probably be invisible from my latitude as being too low in the sky. The farther south one goes, at least to the equator, the higher Mercury will appear. Created using Stellarium.
Venus and Saturn at 5 AM tomorrow morning, June 26th, 2025, in the east-southeastern sky. Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Saturn and Venus (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. On the evening of June 25, 2025, Mercury will have an apparent diameter of 7.0″ and be 54.9% illuminated. Mars will be 5.0″ in diamete. Both are too small to be shown here. My lower size limit is 10″. On the morning of the 26th, Saturn will be 17.6″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on, should show up brighter than seen here., and extend to 40.9″. They are tilted 3.4° from being edge on. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 18.5″, and be 61.7% 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 25, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 26th. 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 25th and 26th, 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.