• July 30 New Moon
  
• August 6 First Quarter and Farpoint Open House
  
• August 10 Bright star occultation (see Extras, below)
• August 13 Full Moon (the “Grain Moon”, or “Green Corn Moon”)
  
• August 21 Last Quarter
  
• August 28 New Moon

• Venus is not visible in August (behind Sun)

Evening Sky:

• Saturn – western sky, early evening

Morning Sky:

• Mercury – emerges from dawn sunglow about August 27
• Jupiter – rises about 10 pm
• Mars – rises about 1-2 am

North to South, at about 10 pm:

• Ursa Minor, the little bear (Polaris, the north star, at end of little dipper's handle)
• Draco, the dragon
• Lyra, the lyre/harp (directly overhead; the bright blue star is Vega)
• Hercules, the warrior (just to Lyra's east)
• Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer
• Aquila, the eagle
• Scutum, the shield
• Sagittarius, the archer (look for the teapot shape, low in the south)

• After a real dry spell in lunar occultations, August offers THREE!
• August 5 (9:56 pm near Topeka): the moon's dark limb covers a 5.9 magnitude star. You'll need binoculars to see this.
• August 8 (10:43 pm near Topeka): the moon's dark limb covers a 5.1 magnitude star. You'll need binoculars for this one, too, because of the Moon's glow.
• August 10 (8:32 pm near Topeka): A very bright star (magnitude 2.9 pi Sagittari) is covered by the gibbous moon's dark limb. This is the brightest-star occultation in many months, and should be visible naked-eye, even though it will be a nearly full moon, still in twilight, and only 18 degrees above the southeast horizon.
• Asteroid Vesta is the brightest asteroid we'll see until 2018. The asteroid probe has just gone into orbit around this one. It's visible in binoculars all month, in the west side of constellation Capricornus (southern sky in evenings).