The moon will move across the southeastern sky late this month, passing through the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion and below the bright planet Jupiter. Also look for the super red giant star Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius.

Action can be seen in Scorpius

For the second time this month we have another great star show, this time in the early evening southeastern sky.

We'll have another nice conjunction when a somewhat fatter moon — approaching full moon stage — pays a visit to Jupiter and the bright star Antares in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion.

The moon's never-ending sojourn eastward from night to night among the starry dome, along with its monthly fattening and thinning, is all courtesy of its 27.3 day orbit around the Earth. The changing angle between the Earth, the moon, and the sun is responsible for the changing phases of the moon as we watch it from our backyards.

Jupiter is living near the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion this summer and there's no mistaking it, because it is, by far, the brightest star-like object in that part of the sky. The second brightest star-like object nearest Jupiter actually is a star.

Antares is the brightest star in Scorpius, a constellation that actually looks like what it's supposed to be — a giant scorpion. To the upper right of Antares there are three distinct stars that make up the head of the scorpion. To the lower left of Antares is the long hooked, stinger tail. Unfortunately the tail can be difficult to see in the northern half of the U.S. because Scorpius never rises that high in the sky, and the tail drags low in the southern horizon most of the night.

This coming Monday evening, as you can see on the diagram, the waxing gibbous "football shaped" moon will be a little to the right of Scorpius and Jupiter.

Tuesday night the moon will be touching the head of the great celestial beast. On Wednesday evening, the growing moon will be just to the left of Antares.

With or without a telescope, the moon is always fun to look at. The dark patches that help you see the face of "the man on the moon" are actually the relatively flat volcanic lands of the moon. The white areas are the mountains and other highlands and all around the moon there are craters of all sizes caused by heavy bombardment of debris in the early years of our solar system.

Jupiter is also a lot of fun to look at with your telescope. The 88,000-mile diameter planet clearly reveals itself as a disk with up to four little "stars" that dance around it from night to night.

Those little "stars" are actually four of Jupiter's brightest moons orbiting around the big planet in periods of two to 17 days.

Also, if the atmosphere is clear enough on any given night you may see greyish bands running across the face of Jupiter. Those are just the brightest of Jupiter's many turbulent cloud bands.

If Earth's atmosphere is not too turbulent and your scope is powerful enough, you may even see Jupiter's biggest storm, the great red spot.

However, even with the clearest skies, seeing the red spot is tricky because of the fact that Jupiter rotates on its axis once every 10 hours. The red spot may be turned away from your view.

The star Antares may be a runner up in brightness to Jupiter in the neighborhood of Scorpius but, believe me, it's one heck of a star. The only reason it's not as bright as Jupiter is that it's much, much farther away.

Jupiter is 427 million miles away right now, which is celestial chicken feed compared with Antares. The giant star is over 600 light-years away, with just one light year equaling almost six trillion miles!

Antares is classified as a super red giant star in our Milky Way Galaxy and, without a doubt, you can see its darkish reddish hue easily with just the naked eye. Antares's ruddy color is due to its lower surface temperature of less than 6,000 degrees. Believe me, that's cool for a star.

Antares greatest claim to bragging rights is its size. Its diameter is 700 times that of our sun, making it so large that if Antares was the center of our solar system instead of our sun, the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and even Jupiter would all be living inside Antares. Talk about some real global warming!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, "Pennslvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.