After Full Moon on July 29th, the Moon is New on August 12th and Full on August 28th.
Meanwhile it passes Saturn on August 3rd, Mercury on the 11th, and totally eclipses the Sun from Greenland, western Ireland, and from Spain to Majorca on the 12th, the first total eclipse in Europe in 27 years, partial over all of the UK and Ireland after 7 p.m.. That night will be particularly good for Perseid meteors (see below), though nowhere near their peak which last occurred in 1993. After New Moon the Moon is near Venus on the 15th and 16th, and there is a partial lunar eclipse peaking at 5.14 a.m. on the 28th.
The revised schedule for the US return to the Moon is gathering momentum under the new Director Jared Isaacman, originally discounted for the position by Donald Trump. The new plan calls for a rendezvous mission between the crewed Orion capsule and two candidate landers produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its Blue Origin rival (Figs. 1-3).
The mission will require near-simultaneous launches by the Artemis booster, SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn, to put all three spacecraft into Earth orbit at once, for compatibility tests before choosing which lander to use for the first crewed lunar landing in 2028. Neither lander is yet anywhere near flight readiness, but the race is on to beat a Chinese landing – currently scheduled for 2030, but that may well be brought forward.
The planet Mercury passes greatest separation from the Sun on August 2nd and through the cluster Praesepe in Cancer on the morning of the 14th, and it’s near Jupiter the following morning, but both events will be in twilight.
Venus remains brilliant but gets lower in the evening sky, paired with the crescent Moon on August 15th, when Venus is at its furthest from the Sun, and still nearby the following night.
Mars moves from Taurus into Gemini mid-month, passed by the waning Moon on August 9th, and just below the star cluster M35 on the 15th.
Continuing study of data from NASA’s Insight lander, ending in 2022, has revealed a widespread discontinuity in the Martian crust, from mafic to ultramafic rock, about 24 km down and probably extending for hundreds or thousands of kilometres, possibly planet-wide, above the planet’s geological mantle. Similar formations are found in the Earth’s crust, under volcanoes, but were not expected given the absence of continental plates on Mars. If the interior of Mars is largely different from Earth’s, it raises the possibility of sub-surface water and even life. (Evan Gough, ‘Mars May Have Vast Magma Systems Below Its Surface’, Universe Today, June 29th 2026.)
Jupiter reappears mid-month in Cancer, rising at 4.30 a.m..
Saturn in Pisces rises at 10 p.m., passed by the Moon on August 3rd.
Uranus, in Taurus, rises at 11.30 p.m..
Neptune in Pisces, rises at 9.30 p.m..
In mid-July NASA scientists announced a remarkable new find: detection of a previously unknown compound on the surfaces of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and Pluto, Titan is comparable in size with Mercury and would be classified as a planet if it was in free orbit; Pluto is no longer classed as a planet, but a growing body of opinion maintains that the definitions used by the International Astronomical Union need to be revised to reinstate it. The argument is further complicated by the announcement in July 2026 that both bodies have a chemical compound on their surfaces which has no counterpart on Earth, or elsewhere as far as we know, but has now been identified on both sub-planetary bodies by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Paul Scott Anderson, ‘Titan and Pluto Share Same Mysterious Molecule: What Is It?’, EarthSky, July 15th 2026.) The announcement is all the more surprising because the two bodies are different in size, chemical composition and distance from the Sun; the only clue at this stage is that they both have temperatures within 100 degrees of Absolute Zero, and the search is on to find what else they have in common that other worlds appear to lack.
The Perseid meteor shower peaks on the 12th and although there is no Moon to spoil it this year, there’s a better chance to see them after 1 a.m. that night and the following one, as the Earth turns to meet the oncoming particles of the shower. The Perseids come from Comet Swift-Tuttle, which has an orbital period of 130 years. The last Perseid peak was 1991-93, so we have 100 years to wait for the next major display, but it’s still worth watching,
Duncan Lunan’s recent books are available from booksellers; details are on Duncan’s website, www.duncanlunan.com.