If you have kids (and even if you don’t, now that I think about it), this weekend will offer an interesting stargazing opportunity: Saturn, Mars, and the Moon will appear in very close alignment with the bright navigational star Regulus in the constellation Leo, low in the western sky right after sunset. This is naked-eye astronomy at its best!

See http://www.physorg.com/news134223857.html for details; there are links to simple star charts for several of the days that should make the formation perfectly easy to find. If you find it on successive nights, you’ll be able to see the formation change shape as the moon and planets move against the star field, which ought to get pretty much any kid’s astronomical juices flowing. By the night of the 10th, the two planets will be almost perfectly aligned… only ¾ of a degree apart, their closest encounter for the next 14 years.

Happy stargazing!