Three bright planets stairstep up the evening sky for most of the month. Venus, the Evening Star, is the brightest, followed by Jupiter, then Mercury (see Featured Event). Scorpius arcs low across the south during the night, while the Summer Triangle—the bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair—is in the east at nightfall and soars high overhead in the wee hours. The Big Dipper is high in the north at nightfall early in the month, but a little lower in the northwest by June’s end.
The full Moon of June is known as the Flower Moon, Strawberry Moon, Rose Moon, or Honey Moon.
Perigee June 14
Apogee June 28
Moon phases are Central Time.
The star Kepler-56, in Cygnus, recently might have engulfed one of its planets. Two more might be doomed as well because the star has puffed up to giant proportions. The system is in the east-northeast at dawn, between Deneb, Cygnus’s brightest star, and brighter Vega.
The Rosette Nebula, a large cloud of gas and dust, stands almost due east of Betelgeuse, the bright orange star at the northeastern corner of Orion. Good binoculars or a telescope reveal a score of stars in a cluster at the nebula’s center.
The Big Dipper has figured in the star lore of most cultures, as everything from a big bear to a plow to a drinking gourd. In the distant future, though, these pictures will vanish because the dipper’s stars are moving in different directions.
Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, looks like a bright star near the Moon this evening. Through good binoculars or a small telescope, its largest moon, Titan, looks like a tiny star quite near the planet.
The planet Mercury is putting in a decent appearance in the evening sky now. It looks like a bright star low in the west during twilight. And tonight it has a prominent companion: the crescent Moon. They will look like they’re almost touching each other.
The planet Mercury is peeking into view in the early evening. It looks like a bright star, but it’s quite low in the west during twilight, so it can be hard to spot. The Moon will join it tomorrow night.
Messier 61 is a spiral galaxy that’s much like our home galaxy, the Milky Way. It is 55 million light-years away, in Virgo. It climbs into the sky in mid-evening, and sails high across the south later on. The galaxy is an easy target for binoculars.
A celestial grandfather strolls low across the south on winter evenings, represented by the stars Alpha and Epsilon Columbae. In the western world, they are part of the constellation Columba, the dove. But in ancient China the due was known as the Grandfather.
The Milky Way arcs high across the sky on February evenings. At this time of year we’re looking away from the center of the galaxy and toward its thinly settled outskirts, so the Milky Way is especially pale. That means you need especially dark skies to see it.
Camelopardalis, the giraffe, ambles across the evening sky this month. It stands above Polaris, the North Star, but it is hard to see because it has no bright stars. You need dark skies (like tonight’s, with no Moon) to find it.
