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.
Jupiter teams up with the Moon and the twins of Gemini tonight. The giant planet looks like a brilliant star below the Moon at nightfall. It’s far brighter than any of the true stars. Gemini’s twin stars, Castor and Pollux, line up to the lower left of the Moon.
The brightest star in the night sky is Sirius, a white jewel in the constellation Canis Major, the big dog. It stands fairly high in the southern sky in early evening. In ancient Egypt, the star represented Isis, the wife of Osiris, the god of the underworld.
The Moon is at first quarter today at 6:27 a.m. CST. It aligns at a right angle to the line between Earth and the Sun, so sunlight illuminates half of the lunar hemisphere that faces our way.
The Moon passes through the outskirts of the Pleiades Cluster tonight. The cluster forms the outline of a small dipper, and is the best-known star cluster in the heavens. But the moonlight makes it tough to see the stars.
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.
