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.
One of the largest stars in the galaxy is Mu Cephei, in the constellation Cepheus. It is visible in the northeast in the evening, halfway between Cygnus, the swan, and W-shaped Cassiopeia, the queen. It is roughly 1,500 times the Sun’s diameter.
Cassiopeia, the queen, is in the north-northeast at nightfall. Its brightest stars form a letter W. Under dark skies, the Milky Way glows behind it. The constellation stands high in the sky at dawn, flipped over so that the “W” is now an “M.”
The Moon reaches first-quarter today at 5:07 p.m. CDT, indicating that it is one-quarter of the way through its monthly cycle of phases. It lines up so that sunlight illuminates exactly half of the hemisphere that faces Earth.
Popular little Pluto is at its best for the year right now. It rises at sunset and is in the sky all night. It’s also at its brightest. Even so, you need a big telescope to spot it, near the border between Sagittarius and Capricornus.
The star cluster M13, in the constellation Hercules, is high overhead as night falls. This family of hundreds of thousands of stars is visible to the unaided eye as a smudge of light. Binoculars hint at its true glory, as dozens of stars pop into view.
This is a good time of year to escape city lights and look skyward. In late evening, a wide, milky band arcs high overhead from north to south. The band is the Milky Way, which represents the muted glow of millions of stars in the disk of our home galaxy.
Venus and Mercury pose close together in the west the next few evenings. Venus is the Evening Star. Tonight, Mercury is to its right, by about the width of your fist at arm’s length. Venus is dropping toward the Sun, while Mercury is pulling away from it.
Look for the planet Mars close to the left of the Moon early this evening. It looks like a modestly bright star. Venus, the Evening Star, is below the Moon, with Regulus between the Moon and Venus, and fainter Mercury to the lower right of Venus.
The Moon and Venus, the Evening Star, stage a beautiful encounter early tonight. They are close together as the Sun sets. They are an especially nice sight because they’re immersed in the colors of twilight.
The Butterfly Nebula, a colorful cocoon of gas around a dying star, is close to the upper right of the “stinger” of the scorpion, which is low in the south at nightfall. The nebula is an easy target for binoculars or a telescope.
