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.
Under dark skies, the star 51 Pegasi is just visible to the unaided eye, high in the southwest at nightfall this month. It was the first Sun-like star with a confirmed planet. The planet’s discoverers earned this year’s Nobel Prize in Physis.
Betelgeuse, the bright orange star that marks the shoulder of Orion, the hunter, is in the east on December evenings. The supergiant star is at least 300 times wider than the Sun and 20 times more massive, and emits 100,000 times as much energy.
Gamma Cephei is a future North Star. A thousand years from now, it will be closer to the north celestial pole than Polaris, the current North Star. You can find it standing directly above Polaris at nightfall at this time of year.
The shortest day of the year is the winter solstice, which is almost three weeks away. Yet the Sun is already setting earliest for the year for most of the U.S. Southern states are seeing the earliest sunsets now, with the north following a week or two later.
The Sun is entering Ophiuchus the serpent-bearer, the thirteenth constellation of the zodiac. Our star will remain within its boundaries for about two more weeks.
Vulpecula, the fox, is in the west as night falls. The constellation is between the stars Deneb and Altair, the two points that form the top side of the bright Summer Triangle.
Messier 30, a star cluster from another galaxy, is low in the south-southwest at nightfall. It’s near the outline of Capricornus, which is to the upper left of the Moon. Through binoculars, the cluster looks like a hazy smudge of light.
The southern constellation Phoenix, which is named for the mythological bird that was reborn from its own ashes, just peeks above the southern horizon this evening from most of the United States.
The three brightest objects in the night sky — the Moon and the planets Venus and Jupiter — congregate low in the sky shortly after sunset. Venus is the brighter planet, quite close to the Moon. Jupiter is a little lower, so it’s tougher to spot.
Fall and winter are the best times for viewing the aurorae, or northern lights — shimmering curtains of light in the night sky. They form when charged particles from the Sun strike atoms and molecules far above Earth’s surface, causing them to glow.
