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.
Rigel, one of the feet of Orion, the hunter, stands to the right of Orion’s three-star belt in early evening. It is one of the biggest, brightest stars in the galaxy. Over the next few million years it is likely to puff up even more, then end its life as a supernova.
Orion may be the most impressive of all the constellations. It consists of a bright rectangle of stars with a “belt” of three stars in the middle, and a massive stellar nursery along the hunter’s sword.
Denebola, the star at the tail of Leo, the lion, is well up in the east at nightfall at this time of year. It forms the bottom point of a triangle of stars that forms the lion’s hindquarters. Regulus, Leo’s brightest star, is to the upper right of the triangle.
The Moon reaches apogee tonight, which is its greatest distance for its current orbit around Earth. It will be roughly 252,347 miles away, which is more than 13,000 miles farther than the average distance.
The Crab Nebula stands high in the east at nightfall, near the tip of one of the horns of Taurus, the bull. You need a telescope to see it because it’s not very bright at visible wavelengths. In X-rays, though, it’s one of the brightest objects in the sky.
A star pattern that runs along the spine of the Milky Way is quite prominent at this time of year. It’s the Northern Cross, which is part of the constellation Cygnus, the swan. It stands almost straight up from the western horizon at nightfall.
The Moon will be new at 7:28 p.m. CST tonight as it crosses the line between Earth and the Sun. It will be immersed in the Sun’s glare, but will return to view as a thin crescent in the early evening sky in a couple of days.
The Skull Nebula is the stripped-off “skin” of a once-normal star. That skin forms a colorful bubble of gas around the star’s dead core. It is in the south at nightfall, well to the lower left of bright orange Mars, although you need a telescope to see it.
The Quadrantid meteor shower is at its best tonight. It typically reaches a peak of about 100 “shooting stars” per hour, making it one of the busiest of all showers. But the peak lasts no more than a couple of hours, so it’s a tough shower to watch.
Earth is closest to the Sun for the entire year the next couple of days. It is about 1.7 percent closer than the average distance of 93 million miles. After tomorrow we will move farther from the Sun until early July.
