This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, May 13th. Today the Sun will be up for 14 hours and 45 minutes, setting at 9:02, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:15. The Moon, 3 days before new, will rise at 4:37 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. By 9:30 PM tonight, about a half hour after sunset, Venus may be seen in the western sky. A telescope will show a very tiny disc on Venus, because it is still pretty much beyond the Sun, 128 million miles (205 million kilometers) away from us. Over the next 5 months it will be moving closer to us and becoming much larger. Jupiter is the second-brightest star-like object in the western sky seen before 10 PM. It is above and left of the brighter Venus. Venus will set at 11:38 PM, while Jupiter will hold out until 1:21 AM. Saturn may be glimpsed just after it rises in the east at 4:48 AM, before morning twilight overwhelms it sometime later.
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
Jupiter, and Venus with a few remaining winter stars at 10 PM tonight, May 13, 2026. The planets are appearing to approach each other. They will be in conjunction on the evening of June 8th. Created using Stellarium.
The waning crescent Moon and Saturn at 5:15 AM May 14, 2026. Created using Stellarium.
A binocular or low power view of the waning creacent Moon showing the expected earthshine on its night side. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.
Telescopic Venus, Jupiter and Saturn (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification, at the times indicated. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 12.2″, and be 84.7% illuminated. It’s on the far side of the Sun. Jupiter will be 34.4″ in diameter, with its moons shown for the time listed. 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 at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on May 13, 2026. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 14th. 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, May 13 and 14th, 2026. 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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