2026-06-20
Daytime Moon Meets Evening Star
Look up and wonder — today's cosmic highlight is Daytime Moon Meets Evening Star:
Why this matters
What you're looking at ties directly to the Moon, the planets, the night sky. Every frame the world's observatories capture adds another data point to humanity's slowly-assembling map of everything beyond our planet.
See it live on ObjectTracer
This connects to what you can track in real time on our 3D globe — explore Moon tracker · Solar System view · Deep Space. Or open the live globe to watch flights, satellites, the ISS and spacecraft move right now.
The science, from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
Venus is now appearing on the celestial stage as Earth's brilliant evening star, performing with the Moon, other wandering planets, and bright stars in western skies. For evening sky gazers on June 17, the celestial beacon rose after sunset close by a young, slender, crescent Moon. But from some locations the Moon could be seen to occult or pass in front of Venus. And from a backyard observatory in southern British Columbia, Canada, the lunar occultation was played out in daylight. This stunning telescopic snapshot captured a scene in dramatically cloudy skies, following Venus' hour long disappearance, as the evening star emerged beyond the bright lunar limb.
Image credit: Debra Ceravolo · Source: NASA APOD
More from the Space Journal
- Buck Moon and Belt of Venus2026-08-01
- Psyche Receives Gravity Assist from Mars2026-07-29
- Tranquility and Serenity2026-07-25
- Barnards Loop over Twin Volcanoes2026-07-28
- Red Sprites in the Tatacoa Desert2026-07-15
- Saturn's Iapetus: Painted Moon2026-07-05