This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, September 24th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 3 minutes, setting at 7:35, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:33. The Moon, 3 days past new, will set at 8:27 this evening.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. Saturn now rises about sunset in the east. It was in opposition from the Sun last Sunday. In a telescope Saturn sports a very thin ring, 1.7° from being edge on. Saturn has an axial tilt of about 27°, so it has seasons like the Earth and since its rings are over its equator, when they go edge on to the Sun, it is an equinox for it, which happened this past May. Earth, being close to the Sun, see nearly the same thing. Now the ring angle for us will decrease to about a third of a degree by November 23rd before increasing. By 6:30 AM Jupiter will appear high in the east-southeast, under the stars of Gemini. With brighter Venus low in the east below the star Regulus in Leo.
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
Saturn, low in the east, is below and a bit right of the Great Square of Pegasus, which stands on one corner at 9 PM tonight, September 24, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
Venus and Jupiter are visible in the east among the winter stars at 6:30 AM tomorrow morning, September 25, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Saturn, Jupiter and Venus (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. On the evening of the September 24th 2025, Saturn will be 19.4″ in diameter, but its rings, even being nearly edge on, should show up brighter than seen here, and extend to 45.3″. They are tilted 1.7° from being edge on. At 6:30 AM on the morning of September 25th 2025, Jupiter will be 36.4″ in diameter. Europa will be eclipsed by Jupiter starting 4:41 AM, Ganymede will disappear into Jupiter’s shadow at 12:15 AM, and reappear at 3:19 AM, only to dissappear behind the planet at 4:20 AM. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 11.3″, and be 90.0% illuminated. It’s on the far side of the Sun. The (”) symbol 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 September 24th, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 25th. 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, September 24th and 25th, 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 