PLANETS TO VIEW: Jupiter remains bright but is lower every evening in the west. Venus is brilliant in the west well above Jupiter. Mars is about zero magnitude and high in the south at dusk. Saturn reaches opposition and is up all night, rising at sunset and setting near sunrise. Mercury is still out of sight.
THE MOON is a morning crescent Monday and wanes to new Friday, giving evening stargazers a fine week of viewing on clear nights.
THIS WEEK: As long as you are looking for Saturn, you should be able to trace large but relatively dim Virgo, Saturn's host constellation.
Start with the head in the southeast at 8:30 p.m., then trace the stick figure to the left. Spica is the bright star near Saturn.
Yellowish Saturn is easy to distinguish from Spica, a powerful Type B blue giant 260 light-years away. If Spica were the same distance from us as Sirius, it would be brighter than Venus. Sirius, at Spica's distance, would be invisible.
Virgo is one of the sky's larger constellations, and a point near the head is where the sun is located on the first day of fall.
DID YOU KNOW? In the re-release of "Titanic" (the ship sank 100 years ago Sunday), the star background in the post-sinking scenes was remade to be astronomically correct.
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