• Given a clear sky, it'll be easy to see the brightest planet, Venus, blazing away as the brilliant morning star before sunrise. It'll be more of a challenge to catch the old waning crescent moon and the star Regulus hovering by the eastern horizon before sunrise on Friday, September 14. In fact, this might be your last chance to spot the moon in the September 2012 morning sky.
• We said old moon. Yes, when the moon is in a thin waning crescent phase astronomers call it an old moon. Next week, after the moon has returned as a crescent to the west after sunset, as

tronomers will call it a young moon.
• The moon turns new on Sunday, September 16 at 2:11 Universal Time. A new moon is passing between the Earth and sun for this month - not directly between at this passage, because there is no eclipse - but as nearly between as it will this time. The whisker-thin waxing crescent moon will first appear in the evening sky a day or two after new moon.
• On Friday morning, as seen from Earth's Southern Hemisphere, it'll be harder to catch the thin morning crescent and especially the star Regulus before sunrise. Regulus might even be difficult to spot with binoculars at mid-southern latitudes - such those in Australia, South Africa or Argentina.
• At far southerly latitudes, Regulus still sits in the glare of morning twilight
• In the Southern Hemisphere, however, the September equinox is their spring equinox. Around the time of the spring equinox - in either the Northern or Southern Hemisphere - the ecliptic intersects the horizon at an especially shallow angle in the

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