With the new moon darkening the skies, you’ll have a rare shot at spotting the Milky Way, deep-sky galaxies, and even the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye.

Each Monday, I pick out North America’s celestial highlights for the week ahead (which also apply to mid-northern latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere).

The dog days of summer are here as August 2025 kicks off with multiple planets in retrograde, the Perseid meteor shower peaks along with Venus and Jupiter shining bright together as the month starts.

The sturgeon moon is named after the giant freshwater sturgeon fish in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. The fish was historically quite abundant in the late summer and a vital food source for Native Americans in the region,