Binoculars or a finderscope will help you detect the Double Cluster even through a fair amount of light pollution. You're looking for what seems like a small spot of enhanced Milky Way glow. To find it, look below the lowest two stars of the Cassiopeia W (they're the faintest two), by somewhat more that the distance between them. The highest part of Perseus includes the wintry Double Cluster. And below it, starry Perseus is reaching up. ■ A sign of the advancing season: Cassiopeia is high in the northeast, its W pattern tilting up. This year Fomalhaut is easier to locate than usual: Look about two fists below Jupiter and a bit left. you should have no trouble spotting it low in the southeast just find an open view in that direction. Its rising time will depend on where you live. ■ Late these evenings as autumn approaches, Fomalhaut, the Autumn Star, makes its inevitable appearance above the southeast horizon. By early dawn on the 30th the scene shifts somewhat, as shown above. It's in Taurus, between the Pleiades cluster above it and, once it climbs high enough, orange Aldebaran below it. The Moon rises around 11 or midnight local time.
■ Last-quarter Moon tonight (exactly last-quarter at 3:13 a.m.
Watch it march across Taurus from Sunday through Tuesday mornings. Though the waning moon is gone from the early evening sky, it's very much present from the middle of the night through dawn. Explore in depth all through here with binoculars or a small scope using Matt Wedel's "Touring Cygnus with Binoculars" article and big chart in the September Sky & Telescope, starting on page 34. ■ Now that the Moon is out of the evening sky, this week is prime Milky Way time! After dark, the Milky Way runs from Sagittarius in the south, up and a bit left left across Aquila and Cygnus high overhead, and on down through Cassiopeia to Perseus low in the north-northeast.Ĭygnus sports the Cygnus Star Cloud, one of the Milky Way's richest areas. Week by week Jupiter and Saturn come into view ever higher in twilight, as seen here. This season, of course, Capricornus is far outshone its guests Jupiter and Saturn. Two hours later when Deneb crosses closest to the zenith, it's the turn of little Delphinus and boat-shaped Capricornus down below it to stand at their highest due south. ■ Whenever bright Vega crosses nearest your zenith, as it does soon after dark now, you know the Sagittarius Teapot is at its highest due south. Cassiopeia too is excellently placed in the evening sky. As of August 26th it also had been holding at 8.0 for several days, after it dipped to 8.6 earlier in August. Its biggest bumps were to magnitude 5.5 in early May and 6.0 around July 27th. Nova Cassiopeiae 2021, meanwhile, has bounced around in brightness ever since it erupted from 15th magnitude to 7.7 last March. Ophiuchus is ideally placed high in the early evening sky. See Bob King's Recurrent Nova RS Ophiuchi Just Blew its Top! with finder charts and comparison stars. As of August 26th it had remained about magnitude 8.0 for four days and was reddening. It fading rapidly at first, then much more slowly. On August 8th the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi lept from its normal magnitude 11.2 to 4.8, dim naked-eye brightness, after 15 years of simmering quietly near minimum.
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