June and July have the shortest nights of the year. Good stargazing can’t really begin until after 10 p.m., and the show’s pretty much over by 4:30 a.m., when morning twilight begins.
Get your afternoon nap so you can enjoy nature’s late, late summer star show — and have the mosquito juice at the ready.
The transition is just about complete. The stars and constellations of winter are pretty much gone from our evening skies, all setting well before the sun. The only bright winter stars left are Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini, and toward the end of evening twilight between 9:30 and 10 you can see them side by side in the low northwestern sky.
The brightest object in the western half of the sky isn’t a star. It’s the planet Saturn. It’s about 30 degrees to the upper left of Castor and Pollux, or about three of your fist-widths at arm’s length.
Even though it’s almost 900 million miles away, more than 100 million miles more distant from Earth than it was last Christmas, it’s still a must-see through any size telescope.
In fact, this will be your last really good chance to see Saturn, because by the end of June, it’ll start out the evening in the very low western sky, setting below the horizon before it really gets dark enough.
Another reason to check out Saturn is that when it comes back to evening sky early next year, the ring system will be angled nearly on edge from our vantage on Earth, and will be more or less invisible. The rings really won’t tilt out again enough for us to see until 2010, so if you’ve never seen Saturn through a telescope before, my advice is to do it as soon as you can this month.
You can’t help but notice that Saturn is just to the upper left of a formation of stars that resembles a backward question mark leaning heavily toward the right. That’s the chest and head of the constellation Leo. To the upper left of Saturn you’ll see three more stars forming a triangle that constitute the derriere and tail of the lion.
To the lower right of Leo, the next brightest starlike object you see is the planet Mars, and there’s no mistaking it, because it really shines with an orange hue.
You really won’t see much more than a tiny rouge disk when you observe Mars, even with a large telescope, because this month the 4,000-mile-wide planet, much smaller than Earth, is more than 175 million miles away. However, later this month it’ll put on a pretty show as it has a close conjunction with Leo and Saturn.
I’ll have more on that later this month.
Over in the eastern skies, the stars of summer are making their initial evening appearance. Leading the way is Vega, the brightest star of Lyra.
A little to the lower left of Vega is Deneb, the brightest shiner in Cygnus, otherwise known as the “Northern Cross” that’s rising sideways in the east.
Deneb lies at the head of cross and is more than 3,000 light years from Earth. (One light year equals almost six trillion miles.) Deneb is a moderately bright star in our sky, but looks are deceiving. It’s almost 400,000 times more powerful than our sun and more than 250 million miles in diameter. Our own sun is less than a million miles in girth. Deneb would be much brighter in our sky, except that it’s so very far away. The starlight we see from Deneb this month left that star around 1200 B.C.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and author of the book, “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com
The Everett Astronomical Society welcomes new members and puts on public star parties. The Web site is members.tripod.com/everett_astronomy.
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