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.
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.
The planet Uranus is high overhead at nightfall. It’s below the Pleiades star cluster, and far to the right of the bright orange star Aldebaran, the eye of the bull. Through good binoculars, the planet looks like a faint star.
The beautiful constellation Orion the hunter strides across the southern sky this evening. It is in the southeast as darkness falls, with its brightest star, Rigel, to the lower right of its prominent three-star belt.
The Pleiades star cluster is high overhead at nightfall, at the bull’s shoulder. It looks like a tiny dipper. Recent research says the cluster was born along with several smaller groups that have gone their own way. Together, they formed the Giant Pleiades Complex.
The gibbous Moon slips past Antares, the bright heart of the scorpion, the next couple of mornings. The star will be to the left or lower left of the Moon at dawn tomorrow and a little closer to the upper right of the Moon on Wednesday.
NGC 2419 is a cluster of one million stars packed into a dense ball. It is 300,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy, making it one of the farthest known residents of the Milky Way. It is in the east-northeast at nightfall and is an easy target for telescopes.
The constellation Lynx is well up in the east-northeast at nightfall. It’s about half way between the Big Dipper and the twins of Gemini. You need nice, dark skies to see much. In fact, its name is a bit of a joke: you need the eyes of a lynx to spot it.
