This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, July 30th. Today the Sun will be up for 14 hours and 43 minutes, setting at 9:10, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:28. The Moon, 2 days before first quarter, will set at 11:40 this evening.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. The Red Planet Mars, will be seen low in the western sky at 10:15 PM. Mars is moving toward Spica, higher in the west-southwest, which will be above the Moon tonight. Mars will pass Spica on September 12th. By then they will be too low in the sky to be seen in twilight. Saturn now rises at 11:15 PM in the east. When I had my first telescope, eagerly waiting for Saturn to rise, I had to wait more than a half hour to get a sharp image of it. By 5:30 AM Saturn will be high in the south, when our winter pal Orion will be rising. Venus will rise at 3:29 AM in the east-northeast and will be higher in the east by 5:30. Jupiter will be below and left of Venus.
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, Spica and the Moon this evening in the western sky near 10 PM tonight, July 30, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
The Moon tonight, July 30, 2025. A view visible in small telescopes showing an image with and without selected features labeled. Feature labels are centered, except for Theophilus, Cyrillus, Catharina, and Proclus whose labels are to the left to avoid clutter. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Venus, Saturn and Jupiter with some bright winter stars at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning, July 31st, 2025, looking from east-northeast to south Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Saturn, Venus and Jupiter (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. On the evening of July 23, 2025, Mars will be 4.5″ in diameter, too small to be shown here. My lower size limit is 10″. On the morning of the 31st, Saturn will be 18.6″ in diameter, but its rings, even being nearly edge on, should show up brighter than seen here., and extend to 43.4″. They are tilted 3.3° from being edge on. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 14.4″, and be 74.9% illuminated. Jupiter will be 32.6″ in diameter, though its satellites may not be visible in the morning twilight. 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 July 30, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 31st. 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, July 30th and 31st, 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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