Tonight · September 3, 2026

The September Sky: Venus Blazing, a Daytime Occultation and the Harvest Moon

September 2026 is a month running at two speeds. At dusk, Venus shines as it will not shine again for a long while, magnitude -4.8 at its peak, but it sets 61 minutes after the Sun on the 1st and only 15 minutes after on the 30th: the window is closing in front of us. At dawn, the traffic runs the other way: Jupiter climbs night after night and gains fifteen degrees of altitude over the month. And in between comes something few people expect to find in a midday sky: on the 14th, the Moon will pass in front of Venus, in broad daylight.

The four evenings that matter

• Midday on the 14th: the Moon, a 12 % crescent, occults Venus. From Paris the planet vanishes at 11:26 CEST just above the eastern horizon and re-emerges at 12:34, eight degrees higher; from London it is 10:29 and 11:35 BST. Everything is in our dedicated article, city by city.
• The 23rd at 00:05 UT: the equinox. Right now is when night gains fastest, 3.6 minutes per day at the latitude of Paris, and we will explain why later this week.
• The evening of the 26th: the Harvest Moon rises at 19:19 in Paris, before the Sun has even set, and will rise only 15 or 16 minutes later on each following evening, against more than 80 minutes in spring.
• From the 5th to the 17th: the month's true dark window. The Moon leaves the evening sky on the 5th and does not return in force until after the 17th: this is the fortnight for the Andromeda Galaxy and for the last good hours of the Milky Way, whose season is ending.

Planet by planet

Venus rules the western dusk, but lower every evening. Its brilliance is still climbing: -4.6 on the 1st, -4.8 around the 23rd, its maximum for the year. There is a paradox buried in that figure, the planet is only 22 % lit that day, and we will give it an article of its own. After the 25th you will need a perfectly open western horizon to catch it before it tips over: inferior conjunction falls on 24 October.

Jupiter resurfaces at dawn after its late-July conjunction with the Sun. It rises at 04:47 CEST on the 1st, at 03:25 on the 30th, and already stands 22 degrees high at the start of civil dawn on the 9th, 37 degrees by the 30th. On the mornings of the 8th and 9th the old crescent Moon passes within six degrees of it: the prettiest moonrise of the month.

Saturn is closing on its 4 October opposition. It rises at 21:44 on the 1st and 19:46 on the 30th: by the end of the month it is up all night, its rings open again.

Neptune reaches opposition on the 26th, 4.3 billion kilometres away. At magnitude 7.8 it is invisible to the naked eye and reachable in binoculars, provided you know exactly where to point. A finder article is coming, chart included.

Mercury and Mars, honestly, are not worth the alarm clock: seen from Western Europe Mercury hugs the Sun all month, still at zero degrees of altitude when the sky darkens even on the 30th, and Mars, at magnitude +1.2 in the dawn, is saving itself for its 2027-2028 season.

The Moon's phases

What these signposts do not tell you

The times are computed for Paris; across Western Europe they shift by minutes, with the UK and Ireland one hour behind throughout. Altitudes depend on your latitude: from Edinburgh, Jupiter climbs more slowly than from Marseille. For your own position, minute by minute, the SkyChart sky map recomputes everything, free and without an account. And if only one appointment survives your diary, make it the 14th: a daytime occultation of Venus visible from the whole of Western Europe, and the next one does not come back before May 2028.

This article was translated from the French edition by AI, then reviewed before publication. The figures are not translated: times, magnitudes and altitudes are computed by SkyChart and are identical in both editions.

• September 2026 sky
• Venus