In the Sky This Month

A small, faint “shield” of stars climbs high across the southern sky on June nights. The constellation Scutum represents the coat of arms on the shield of John Sobieski, a 17th-century king of Poland and one of that country’s greatest heroes.

Venus, the “evening star,” is climbing a little higher into the sky each night. Tonight, the brilliant planet lines up with the twins of Gemini. The brighter star, Pollux, is closer to Venus, with Castor farther along the same line.

In western culture, the stars of the Big Dipper and those around it form the great bear, Ursa Major. The dipper is his body and tail, and three faint pairs of stars represent his feet. In ancient Arabia, those stars represented the leaps of a gazelle.

The sky is divided into 88 constellations. One of them is split into two disconnected parts. Serpens, the serpent, consists of a head and a tail. Serpens is in full view in the east and southeast by a couple of hours after sunset.

The star cluster IC 4665 is a quarter of the way up the sky as it gets dark. It stands to the lower right of the brightest star of Ophiuchus the serpent-bearer. Under really dark skies, the cluster is barely visible to the unaided eye.

From the southern latitudes of the United States, the upper half of Centaurus, the centaur, stands due south at nightfall. The brightest star in that part of the constellation is Menkent, the centaur’s shoulder.

Some of the most interesting objects in the constellation Ophiuchus look like dark holes in the sky. Instead, though, they are immense clouds of cold gas and dust. They absorb the light of the stars behind them, so they look almost black.

The year’s earliest sunrises in the northern hemisphere occur over the next few days. The date varies by latitude, with southern locations getting that extra sunlight first. The longest day of the year is the summer solstice, June 21.

The constellaton Ophiuchus is low in the eastern sky on June evenings. Its stars are faint. Under a dark sky, though, they form a pattern that resembles an old coffee pot, which is on its side in early evening, and upright later on.

Look for Mars leading the Moon across the sky late tonight. The planet looks like a bright orange star, and rises to the upper right of the Moon. Mars will grow brighter over the next few weeks, reaching its peak in late July.