Astronomer Guy Ottewell offers his insights - and chart-making skills - to you during this 2020 opposition of our solar system's golden and glorious planet of the rings, Saturn.

Mercury is only modestly-bright in mid-July 2020, but let the waning crescent moon and the planet Venus help you to locate Mercury near the horizon as darkness gives way to dawn. If you can't see this world with the eye alone, try binoculars!

Like so much in astronomy, Jupiter's opposition happens in a way that's cyclical. And the cycle of oppositions for Jupiter is especially pleasing to the mind. Astronomer Guy Ottewell offers his insights - and chart-making skills - to you during this 2020 opposition of our solar system's largest planet.

The year's farthest quarter moon - yet the year's closest lunar apogee - both fall on July 12, 2020. Coincidence?

On the heels of the June solstice, the new moon will sweep directly in front of the sun on Sunday, June 21, 2020, to stage an annular - ring of fire - solar eclipse for the world's Eastern Hemisphere.

In the view of modern cosmologists, the Big Bang is the event that marked the birth of our universe. What was it - when was it - and what are modern theories?

When the lunar nodes pointed directly at the sun on June 20, 2020, the event marked the middle of the eclipse season. Shortly thereafter, an annular eclipse of the sun took place on June 21, 2020.

Watch for the moon, Jupiter and Saturn around June 7, 2020. The moon is very bright now, so Jupiter and Saturn are specks in its glare. Jupiter is a brighter speck than Saturn.

Photos - taken through telescopes, or with other optical aid - from the EarthSky community. The brightest planet Venus is now in a thin crescent phase as viewed from Earth. Venus will go between us and the sun on June 3.

The planets Jupiter and Saturn are exceedingly near each other now on the sky's dome, heading for a 20-year conjunction later this year. See them with the moon on May 12!