The Northern Hemisphere's Harvest Moon is always the full moon falling the closest to the autumnal equinox. It's coming up in 2020 on October 1 or 2. What's more, this Harvest Moon will be near Mars!
Brilliant Venus, in and of itself, is worth getting up for, but the tantalizingly close encounter of Venus with the bright star Regulus won't happen again for another 8 years. Start watching them now!
Live in the Southern Hemisphere? Take advantage of your golden opportunity to view Mercury in the evening sky now. Live in the Northern Hemisphere? Give Mercury a try after sunset! You might see it.
At an equinox, and for several days before and after, the midday sun is straight up at noon seen from Earth's equator. At this equinox, the sun is crossing the celestial equator, moving from north to south.
These next several nights - September 4, 5 and 6, 2020 - let the moon introduce you to the red planet Mars. Next month, in October 2020, Mars will supplant Jupiter as the sky's 4th-brightest heavenly body.
Bruce McClure served as lead writer for EarthSky's popular Tonight pages from 2004 to 2021, when he opted for a much-deserved retirement. You can still find many articles at EarthSky.org that were originally written by Bruce, and which the EarthSky editors still update regularly. Bruce is a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also wrote and hosted public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York. Bruce he loves cycles of all kinds! You can still find many articles at EarthSky with Bruce's name on them, exploring the various, intricate cycles of the sky.