July ends with a spectacular group of celestial objects in the eastern dawn sky. The waning crescent moon will appear with the Pleiades cluster, the planets Jupiter and Mars, and the bright star Aldebaran for two consecutive mornings.
The chart shows the view looking east from London at 4am BST on July 31. On this night, the 25-day moon will be a waning crescent moon with only 19% of its visible surface illuminated. The night before, the crescent will be larger, and less fragile, but will be more central, appearing near Mars.
The grouping takes place in the constellation of Taurus, the bull, with several stars of the constellation that add to the show. Aldebaran is a red giant star, fully 45 times the radius of our sun and 400 times brighter.
The Pleiades are a collection of hundreds of stars, of which a handful are visible to the naked eye. This gives birth to the popular name of the seven sisters. The brightest star in the cluster is Alcyone.
The cluster is also visible from the Southern Hemisphere, just rising in the northeastern sky before sunlight washes the spectacle out of view.
