The bright star near the moon on July 24, 2012 is Spica in the constellation Virgo, and the other two bright lights are two planets, Mars and Saturn. The moon is in a more easterly location relative to the stars and planets tonight than it was last night. Of course it is! The moon moves continually toward the east in its orbit around Earth. Note the wonderful contrast of color between sparkling blue-white Spica, the red planet Mars and the golden planet Saturn. You can see these colors with the eye alone. Binoculars make the color contrast even more apparent.
July 2012 guide to the five visible planets
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Tonight’s moon is in a fairly wide waxing crescent phase. It’ll reach its half-lit first quarter phase on Thursday, July 26. The waxing crescent moon will be plumper – closer to first quarter phase – when it comes out after sunset tomorrow night.
We got this comment from an online friend:
I was driving down a lonely stretch of dark Georgia highway the other night heading west. This gave me plenty of hours and miles to contemplate the moon . . . Is there a formal name for the border of lunar night and day?
There is indeed a name for this demarcation between light and dark on the moon. When you look at the moon in any phase other than full, you are in fact seeing portions of both the day side and night side of the moon. The name for this border between lunar night and day is the terminator line.
Look along the terminator – the line dividing the lunar day and night – for your best topographical views of the moon. Photo: NASA
If you’re using a telescope or binoculars, and want to observe features on the moon’s surface, one trick is to look along the terminator line. There, shadows are causing lunar craters and mountains to stand out in stark relief in contrast to the surrounding plains. This is, after all, the line of lunar sunrise, and in some ways it’s similar to the long shadows we see on Earth at sunrise or sunset.
If you were standing at the location of that line on the moon’s surface, you’d be standing at the edge of day, or night. A similar line on Earth’s surface passes over you each day at sunset and sunrise. But there is one major difference. On the moon, there’s no dusk or dawn, because the moon doesn’t have any air to disperse sunlight, and to create the twilight that we see on Earth.
That’s at nightfall and evening on this Tuesday night, July 24, 2012: The waxing crescent moon near the star Spica, and the planets Mars and Saturn.
Article source: http://earthsky.org/tonight/moon-near-mars-spica-saturn-plus-lunar-night-vs-lunar-day
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