What’s Up: August 2025 Skywatching Tips from NASA - UNIVERSE

 

Venus-Jupiter Conjunction and Meteor Mojo

Jupiter and Venus shine brightly in the mornings as they appear to graze each other in the sky on the 11th and 12th. The Perseids are washed out by the Moon.

Skywatching Highlights

All Month – Planet Visibility:

• Mercury: Pops up above the horizon during the second half of August. Appears very low, below 10 degrees altitude.
• Venus: Shines very brightly in the east each morning before sunrise, about 20 to 30 degrees above the horizon.
• Mars: Can be observed low in the west during the hour after sunset, appearing about as bright as the brightest stars in the Big Dipper.
• Jupiter: Appears in the east each morning, together with Venus, but much less bright.
• Saturn: Observable late night to dawn. Rises around 10:30 p.m. early in the month, and around 8:30 p.m. by the end of the month. Find it high in the south as sunrise approaches.

Skywatching Highlights:

August 11 & 12 – Venus-Jupiter Conjunction – The two brightest planets have a close meetup over several days, appearing closest over two days on the 11th and 12th, at just a degree apart.

August 19 & 20 – Moon with Jupiter & Venus – A slim lunar crescent joins Jupiter and Venus — still relatively close in the sky after their conjunction. They appear in the east in the several hours preceding sunrise.

August 12th-13th – Perseids Peak – The celebrated annual meteor shower will be hampered by an 84%-full Moon on the peak night. A few bright meteors may still be seen in the pre-dawn hours, but viewing conditions are not ideal this year.

All month – The Dumbbell Nebula (M27) – One of the easiest planetary nebulas to observe, M27 appears within the Summer Triangle star pattern, high overhead in the first half of the night.

Transcript

What’s Up for August? Jupiter and Venus have a morning meetup, we check out this year's Perseid meteor shower, and peek into the future of our own Sun.

Mars is the lone planet in the early evening sky this month, visible low in the west for about an hour after the sky starts to darken. It’s now only about 60% as bright as it appeared back in May. 

Saturn is rising by about 10 pm, and you’ll see it showing up a bit earlier each evening as the month goes on. You’ll find it in the east after dark with the constellations Cassiopeia and Andromeda. The Ringed Planet makes its way over to the western part of the sky by dawn, where early risers will find it on August mornings.

The real highlight of August is the close approach of Jupiter and Venus. They shine brightly in the east before sunrise throughout the month. The pair begin the month farther apart, but quickly approach each other in the sky. They appear at their closest on the 11th and 12th — only about a degree apart. Their rendezvous happens against a backdrop of bright stars including Orion, Taurus, Gemini, and Sirius. A slim crescent Moon joins the pair of planets after they separate again, on the mornings of the 19th and 20th.

Sky chart showing the eastern sky before sunrise on August 11th, with Venus and Jupiter only a degree apart.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of the best annual meteor showers, the Perseids, peaks overnight on August 12th and into the 13th. Unfortunately, this year the Moon is nearly full on the peak night, and its glare will wash out all but the brightest meteors. While that's not so great for Perseid watchers, the good news is that another favorite annual meteor shower, the Geminids, is poised for Moon-free viewing in December.

August is a great time to see one of the easiest-to-observe nebulas in the sky. 

The Dumbbell Nebula, also known as M27, is high overhead on August nights. It’s a type of nebula called a “planetary nebula.” 

A nebula is a giant cloud of gas and dust in space, and planetary nebulas are produced by stars like our Sun when they become old and nuclear fusion ceases inside them. They blow off their outer layers, leaving behind a small, hot remnant called a white dwarf. The white dwarf produces lots of bright ultraviolet light that illuminates the nebula from the inside, as the expanding shell of gas absorbs the UV light and re-radiates it as visible light. 

The Dumbbell Nebula, nicknamed for its dumbbell-like shape, appears as a small, faint patch of light about a quarter of the width of the full moon in binoculars or a small telescope. It lies within the Summer Triangle, a pattern of stars that's easy to find overhead in the August sky. You’ll find the nebula about a third of the way between its bright stars Altair and Deneb.

Sky chart showing the Summer Triangle asterism, with the location of the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) indicated.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Here’s hoping you get a chance to observe this glimpse into the future that awaits our Sun about 5 billion years from now. It’s part of a cycle that seeds the galaxy with the ingredients for new generations of stars and planets — perhaps even some not too different from our own.

Here are the phases of the Moon for August.

The phases of the Moon for August 2025.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

You can stay up to date on all of NASA's missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov. I'm Chelsea Gohd from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that's What's Up for this month. 

Source: What's Up: August 2025 Skywatching Tips from NASA - NASA Science