Scorpius and Sagittarius highlight July nights, scooting low across the south. Antares highlights the scorpion’s hook-shaped body, with teapot-shaped Sagittarius to its left. Under dark skies, the Milky Way rises from the teapot’s spout like steam. Meanwhile, the Big Dipper stands high in the north and northwest during the evening, with its handle to the upper left and bowl to the lower right.
The full Moon of July is known as the Hay Moon, Thunder Moon, or Apollo Moon.
Perigee July 13
Apogee July 25
Moon phases are Central Time.
The Big Dipper is high in the sky at nightfall at this time of year, with W-shaped Cassiopeia low in the sky. If you look shortly before dawn, though, they’ve moved. The dipper is in the northwest, with Cassiopeia the same height in the northeast.
The Moon is new at 9:29 p.m. CDT as it crosses between Earth and the Sun, so it is lost in the Sun’s glare. It will return to view as a thin crescent low in the early evening sky on Friday.
The Lyrid meteor shower should be at its best tonight, after midnight. Away from city lights, you might see a few dozen “shooting stars.” They can streak across any part of the sky, so you don’t need to look in a specific direction to see them.
A pretty good meteor shower should reach its peak tomorrow night: the Lyrids. Under a dark sky, you might see a dozen or more meteors per hour between midnight and dawn. And the Moon is new, so it’s not around to spoil the show.
On any dark night, if you can get away from city lights, you might see a dozen or more meteors blazing across the sky. These streaks of light form when space rocks vaporize as they ram into Earth’s atmosphere at high speed.
A pair of centaurs — the half-men, half-horses of Greek mythology — grace the night sky. One is Sagittarius, the archer. The other is simply Centaurus, the centaur. It’s quite low in the southern evening sky this month.
A couple of hours after sunset, Regulus, the brightest star of Leo, the lion, stands overhead. Spica, in Virgo, is in the southeast. Both are white or blue-white. Far to the left of Spica, look for yellow-orange Arcturus, in Boötes.
The stars of the Big Dipper are part of Ursa Major, the great bear. In a Kiowa story, the dipper’s seven stars represent sisters who were borne into the sky to escape their brother, who had been magically transformed into a bear.
Mars teams up with the Moon at first light tomorrow. The planet looks like an orange star above the Moon. Saturn and Jupiter line up to their upper right, with Jupiter by far the brighter of the two.
The Moon is rolling past a trio of bright planets in the early morning sky this week. Tomorrow, Saturn will stand above the Moon, with brilliant Jupiter to the upper right and orange Mars to the lower left.
