Last week in Starwatch I told you about a nice coupling of Venus, Jupiter, and the moon in the early eastern predawn sky, which is still going on minus the moon.

This week we get a great show in the early evening southwestern sky as well, as the new crescent moon gets up close and personal with Mars and Saturn just after twilight.

Sunday evening look for the crescent moon in the low west-southwest Butler sky. You’ll need to have a clear view of the horizon to see it, otherwise trees and houses could get in the way.

Observing from a hill or at least higher ground can help. Just to the upper left of the moon you’ll see three stars forming a skinny triangle. Actually there’s only one star in that triad. Just to the upper left of the moon is the planet Mars, that even to the naked eye has a reddish copper tinge to it.

Just to the upper left of Mars, the next “star” you’ll see will be Saturn.

The moon, Mars, and Saturn will form a nearly straight line. Just to the lower left of Saturn is Spica, an actual star and the brightest luminary in the large but faint constellation Virgo the Virgin.

You can have some real fun here with even a small telescope. The moon, of course, is your best target with its craters, mountains and darker, smoother lunar plains called maria.

The best place to train your scope is along what’s known as the terminator, the inside left edge of the crescent. That’s where you can see the most detail because that’s where the sun is rising on the moon and you have longer shadows. Sometimes you can even see some of the lunar mountain peaks poke above the left or dark side of the terminator.

The second best telescope target is Saturn, which is always great because you can see its ring system. You may even see some of its many moons that resemble tiny stars swarming around.

Saturn won’t appear quite as large through your scope as it did in spring because it’s farther away at 900 million miles. That’s about 100 million miles farther than in late March.

Saturn may also appear a little fuzzier because you have to see it through a thicker layer of the Earth’s atmosphere since it’s a lot lower in the sky. Despite those handicaps Saturn is still worth your telescope while.

I wouldn’t spend much time at all looking at Mars. It’s a much smaller planet than Earth, with a diameter of a little more than 4,000 miles compared with our world’s 8,000 mile girth. Mars, at almost 150 million miles away, will be a little fuzzy dot at best.

Also, I have a semiregular friendly reminder for you when using a telescope. Make sure you let it sit outside with all of the eyepieces that you’ll be using for at least 45 minutes before you use it. The glass and other optics have to adapt to the outside temperature or whatever you’re looking at will seem a little fuzzy and distorted.

Monday night the moon will be a little fatter in the sky and will appear just to the lower left of Mars. On Tuesday night the even fatter crescent moon will be parked right next to Spica and Saturn. The night-to-night drifting of the moon eastward and the moon’s changing phase shape are both due to the fact that it orbits the Earth every 27.3 days.

The moon’s orbital plane around the Earth is nearly the same as the plane of Earth and the rest of the planets in our solar system, so its quite common to have what I call celestial “huggings” between our moon and planets in our celestial dome.

On Wednesday night the first half moon will be just below a moderately bright star with a mouthful for a name. It’s the star Zubenelgenubi, pronounced zuba gela new bee.

If that’s not a long enough star name for you, the next brightest star above Zubenelgenubi is Zubeneschamali, pronounced zuba-nesh-a-molly. These are Arabic names that translate to the south claw and northern claw, respectively.

Originally these stars marked the claws of the great constellation Scorpius the Scorpion, which is just to the lower left of the Z stars.

In the days of the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar hacked the claws off of Scorpius and made the Z stars the brightest of the new constellation Libra the Scales, which Caesar used as a celestial sign of Roman justice.

If you can use those two Z stars and a few other dimmer stars around them to make up a scale, more power to ya!