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 panoply of constellations includes one king: Cepheus, who ruled the Ethiopia of mythology. His constellation looks like a child’s drawing of a house, with a rectangle of stars topped by a pointed roof. It is in the northwest in early evening.
El Nath, known as the “butting one” because it marks the tip of one of the horns of Taurus, the bull, poses to the lower left of the Moon at nightfall. The Moon will move even closer to it before they set, around 4:30 or 5 a.m.
Mars is inching into the dawn sky. It’s quite close to the Sun, though, and it rises at a shallow angle. From Hawaii or southern Florida or Texas, you might spot it quite low in the southeast before sunrise. The rest of the U.S. won’t see it for a few weeks.
For skywatchers in Hawaii and southern Texas and Florida, the constellation Phoenix is low in the southern sky at nightfall. Those at more northerly locations may see parts of the firebird, but not the whole thing.
Jupiter stands close below the Moon as night falls. The solar system’s largest planet looks like a bright star. The only objects in the night sky that outshine it are the Moon and the planet Venus.
The giant planet Jupiter keeps company with the Moon the next couple of nights. It looks like a brilliant star. It’s to the left or upper left of the Moon tonight, and closer below the Moon tomorrow night.
The star V1355 Orionis is a hothead. It produces frequent eruptions of energy and particles that are many times more powerful than any eruption ever seen from the Sun. It is about 400 light-years away, in Orion, which is in the east and southeast at nightfall.
The globular star cluster Messier 2 stands low in the west at nightfall, in the constellation Aquarius. It’s not quite bright enough to see with the eye alone, but binoculars show it as a small, fuzzy blob of light. It contains perhaps 150,000 stars.
Several especially bright stars highlight the eastern sky on January evenings. The list includes Betelgeuse and Rigel in Orion, Pollux and Castor in Gemini, and the brightest nighttime star of all, Sirius, in the big dog.
Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, is especially easy to find now. It looks like a bright star above the Moon as darkness falls tonight, and will stand to the lower right of the Moon tomorrow night.
