In the Sky This Month

Hercules, the strong man, stands directly overhead as darkness falls tonight. It’s marked by a lopsided square of stars known as the Keystone. Despite the constellation’s fame, though, the stars of Hercules aren’t all that bright.

The hazy band of the Milky Way arches high across the sky on mid-summer evenings. At nightfall, it stretches from almost due north, high across the east, to almost due south. It stands high overhead by midnight. You need to get away from city lights to see it.

A semicircle of stars stands high in the sky at nightfall. It is Corona Borealis, the northern crown, and it stands almost directly overhead as twilight fades. Ancient skywatchers named it for the crown of Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos of Crete.

The star Elnath is quite close to the Moon early tomorrow. The star’s name means “the butting one,” which describes its position at the tip of a horn of Taurus. A second name for the star is Beta Tauri, indicating that it’s the bull’s second-brightest star.

The Moon and three companions form a figure that resembles a sail early tomorrow. Mars looks like a bright orange star close to the lower right of the Moon. Much brighter Jupiter is farther below the Moon, while the star Aldebaran is to the right of Jupiter.

The Moon dashes through a region packed with bright stars and planets the next few mornings. It will pass especially close to Mars, Jupiter, and Elnath, the tip of one of the bull’s horns. Aldebaran, the bull’s eye, will stay a little farther from the Moon.

The Moon reaches the last of its four phases at 9:52 p.m. CDT today. At last quarter, sunlight illuminates half of the lunar hemisphere that faces Earth, so it looks like someone chopped the Moon down the middle.

The Delta Aquarid meteor shower is building toward its peak, next week. Its “shooting stars” appear to rain into Earth’s atmosphere from the constellation Aquarius. The meteors can appear in any direction, however, so it’s best to scan the entire sky.

Sagittarius scoots low across the south on summer evenings. Its brightest stars form the outline of a teapot. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is above the spout of the teapot, hidden behind dark dust clouds.

In mythology, Sagittarius was a centaur holding a bow and arrow. To modern eyes, though, the constellation looks like a teapot. It is low in the south-southeast at nightfall, with the handle to the left and the spout to the right.