While away at a wedding I had seen in the news that morning of Mars and the Moon being separated by about four degrees, so I a made a mental note to check the planets during the reception. As the reception began just as it got good and dark. I pointed planets out to some people of the course of the evening, and that turned out to be a great conversation starter.

Saturn was on the meridian at the end of dusk but still rather low in the sky compared to the planets that would follow. It seemed to me that it is already losing some of its brightness.

The tree line was several hundred feet away from the knoll that I was standing on, so I was able to see Jupiter above the trees at dark. It rose quite high over the course of the evening.

Of the Mars-Moon pair, I saw the Moon first. Mars was to the left and slightly lower than the Moon, but I wasn’t able to pull it out of the muck until it had ascended a pretty good bit. It had some way to go before reaching the meridian when the reception ended, but I could tell that it would pass very close to directly overhead.