Planetary Parade

August 2018

Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter dominate the southern sky after the sun sets in early August. Later in the month, the Moon will join the quartet, reaching a first quarter phase on August 18.

Suggested Activity
This celestial event presents a great opportunity to discuss the scale of the solar system. Solar system scale models are easy to create, though difficult to implement both size and distance scales in the same model. If modeling both size and scale is important to you, the Jump to Jupiter activity models both in a relatively small space. This activity is intended to be conducted in an informal learning setting such as a public library, science center, museum, etc. with elementary and middle school-aged learners.