On the first of the month, Venus and Jupiter are nearest each other (or in appulse), when they are separated by a mere 1 1/4 degrees. Gate crasher Spica, which passes by the duo during the first week of September, gets within 1 3/4 degrees of Venus. The three bright lights form a nearly horizontal line on the 3rd, about 3 degrees long.
A thin helping of Moon drifts past the trio on the 6th and 7th. With all of this going on, the west-southwestern sky is clearly the place to be, in the gloaming of early September.
While the Moon drifts westward, getting fatter and fatter each night, Spica is soon lost to the glare of the setting Sun. Jupiter also loses altitude, setting about 40 minutes after the Sun by the end of the month. Venus, meanwhile, remains at about the same altitude throughout September, setting about an hour and a half after the sun.
Where Venus and friends leave off, which is the remainder of the night sky, Mars picks up the slack. Shining among the stars like a distant brush fire, its brightness increases from magnitude -1.0 to -1.7, which makes it brighter than shiny white Sirius. Mars, drifting around the border between Aries and Taurus, rises earlier and earlier each night. It rises by about 8:30 pm local time at month's end.
While Mars is an early riser late in the month, Saturn rises around 2:00 am local time. It lingers near the Beehive star cluster throughout the month; they are nearest each other ... a distance of a little more than 1 degree ... on the 14th. Being such a fuzzy little cloud to the naked eye, the Beehive star cluster is better viewed with binoculars, so if you have them, use them to see Saturn and the "cloud." Those binoculars might also come in handy at the end of the month, when the ringed planet passes within 1/3 degree of the star Asellus Australis (Delta Cancri.)
And fickle Mercury, coming and going so rapidly, never drifting far from the Sun, is visible in the predawn sky during the first week of the month. It zooms past the bright star Regulus on the 4th. They are about 1.1 degrees apart, and about 12 degrees from the Sun.
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