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.
The Moon stands almost due east at sunset. It’s in its “waxing gibbous” phase. “Gibbous” means that sunlight illuminates more than half of the hemisphere facing Earth, while “waxing” means that a greater percentage of the surface is lit each night.
Under a dark sky, far from city lights, the eye can see thousands of stars, yet only a few are like the Sun. Two of them are in view by about 10 p.m. 51 Pegasi is in the south, well above the Moon. At the same time, Tau Ceti is low in the southeast.
The Orionid meteor shower will be at its best this weekend. The Moon makes a pest of itself, though, especially on Sunday night, when the shower should reach its peak. It leaves a little better viewing window tonight and tomorrow night, though.
The planet Mars stands to the right of the Moon at nightfall. Although it has lost a good bit of its luster since the summer, it remains one of the half-dozen brightest objects in the night sky, shining like a brilliant orange star.
Look for the planet Mars to the left of the Moon as darkness falls this evening. It looks like a bright orange star. Mars will stand even closer to the Moon as they set, after midnight.
A space rock the size of a building will buzz near Earth tomorrow, although there is no risk of it hitting us. Asteroid 2014 US7 will miss Earth by about 750,000 miles, which is three times the distance to the Moon.
Auriga, the charioteer, climbs into view in the northeast by about 9 p.m. It’s marked by yellow-orange Capella, one of the brightest stars in northern skies.
Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, huddles quite close to the Moon tonight. The giant planet looks like a bright golden star to the left of the Moon.
Deneb Algedi, the tail of the sea-goat, is in the southern sky at nightfall, in the constellation Capricornus. Deneb Algedi is a good bit bigger and hotter than the Sun, and much farther along in life.
The Andromeda galaxy is in the east-northeast at nightfall. Under dark skies, it looks like a smudge of light. It’s a family of hundreds of billions of stars. It is 2.5 million light-years away — the farthest object easily visible to the eye alone.
