Three bright planets stairstep up the evening sky for most of the month. Venus, the Evening Star, is the brightest, followed by Jupiter, then Mercury (see Featured Event). Scorpius arcs low across the south during the night, while the Summer Triangle—the bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair—is in the east at nightfall and soars high overhead in the wee hours. The Big Dipper is high in the north at nightfall early in the month, but a little lower in the northwest by June’s end.
The full Moon of June is known as the Flower Moon, Strawberry Moon, Rose Moon, or Honey Moon.
Perigee June 14
Apogee June 28
Moon phases are Central Time.
Perseus the hero stands overhead by 9 or 10 p.m. Many of its stars are immersed in the glow of the Milky Way. As you look at Perseus, you see stars in three of the galaxy’s spiral arms, named for the constellations Orion, Perseus, and Cygnus.
The planet Mercury is quite low in the southeast in the dawn twilight the next few days. It looks like a bright star, but you need a clear horizon to see it. It’s easier to spot from southerly latitudes. Tomorrow, the Moon stands to its right or upper right.
Leo climbs into good view after midnight. K2-18, a faint star to the right of Denebola, the lion’s tail, hosts a planet that reportedly shows signs of microscopic life in its atmosphere. The finding has not yet been confirmed, however.
Cetus spreads across the southeastern quadrant of the sky at nightfall. Diphda, its brightest star, is near its lower right corner, roughly a third of the way up the sky. The star is at the end of its life, so it has puffed up to giant proportions.
The Geminid meteor shower is in good view tonight. The meteors are visible from mid-evening on. At its best, the shower might produce 100 or so meteors per hour. You don’t need to look in a particular direction to see them.
The Geminid meteor shower will reach its peak tomorrow night. The meteors are bits of debris burning up in the atmosphere. Many of them come from a large asteroid, which may have been part of a larger object that was destroyed in an impact.
The Moon reaches its last-quarter phase at 2:52 p.m. CST, when it lines up at a right angle to the line between Earth and the Sun. Sunlight will illuminate half of the lunar surface, with the bright fraction growing smaller over the coming week.
A long-forgotten reindeer jingles across the sky tonight. The extinct constellation Tarandus vel Rangifer snuggles close to Polaris, which marks the north celestial pole. It’s above the pole this evening, to the right of M-shaped Cassiopeia.
The Moon and the heart of the lion just miss each other tonight. As they climb into good view, after midnight, the Moon and the star Regulus will be separated by just a skosh. The farther north and east your location, the closer together they will appear.
NGC 6505 is a spiral galaxy enwrapped in the coils of Draco, the dragon. The galaxy is more than a third of the way up the northwestern sky at nightfall and is visible through a small telescope.
