What’s up for August? Jupiter and Venus have a morning meetup, we check out this year's Perseid meteor shower, and peek into the future of our own Sun.

Mars is the lone planet in the early evening sky this month, visible low in the west for about an hour after the sky starts to darken. It’s now only about 60% as bright as it appeared back in May. 

Saturn is rising by about 10 p.m., and you’ll see it showing up a bit earlier each evening as the month goes on. You’ll find it in the east after dark with the constellations Cassiopeia and Andromeda. The Ringed Planet makes its way over to the western part of the sky by dawn, where early risers will find it on August mornings.

The real highlight of August is the close approach of Jupiter and Venus. They shine brightly in the east before sunrise throughout the month. 

The pair begin the month farther apart, but quickly approach each other in the sky. They appear at their closest on the 11th and 12th — only about a degree apart. Their rendezvous happens against a backdrop of bright stars including Orion, Taurus, Gemini, and Sirius. A slim crescent Moon joins the pair of planets after they separate again, on the mornings of the 19th and 20th.

One of the best annual meteor showers, the Perseids, peaks overnight on Aug. 12 and into Aug. 13. 

Unfortunately, this year the Moon is nearly full on the peak night, and its glare will wash out all but the brightest meteors. 

While that's not so great for Perseid watchers, the good news is that another favorite annual meteor shower, the Geminids, is poised for Moon-free viewing in December.

August is a great time to see one of the easiest-to-observe nebulas in the sky. 

The Dumbbell Nebula, also known as M27, is high overhead on August nights. It’s a type of nebula called a “planetary nebula.” 

A nebula is a giant cloud of gas and dust in space, and planetary nebulas are produced by stars like our Sun when they become old and nuclear fusion ceases inside them. They blow off their outer layers, leaving behind a small, hot remnant called a white dwarf. The white dwarf produces lots of bright ultraviolet light that illuminates the nebula from the inside, as the expanding shell of gas absorbs the UV light and re-radiates it as visible light. 

The Dumbbell Nebula, nicknamed for its dumbbell-like shape, appears as a small, faint patch of light about a quarter of the width of the full moon in binoculars or a small telescope. It lies within the Summer Triangle, a pattern of stars that's easy to find overhead in the August sky. You’ll find the nebula about a third of the way between its bright stars Altair and Deneb.

Here’s hoping you get a chance to observe this glimpse into the future that awaits our Sun about 5 billion years from now. It’s part of a cycle that seeds the galaxy with the ingredients for new generations of stars and planets — perhaps even some not too different from our own.

You can stay up to date on all of NASA's missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov.

Chelsea writes for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.