June and July have the shortest nights of the year in the Pacific Northwest, so 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.
The transition to summer skies 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 the Twins. Toward the end of evening twilight you can see them side by side in the very low northwestern sky.
Castor and Pollux aren’t the only bright shiners in that part of the sky though. The planet Saturn is definitely brighter, hanging out a little higher in the western sky.
The ringed wonder is just below the triangular rear end of the constellation Leo the Lion. It’s the brightest starlike object in that part of the sky. The chest and head of Leo are outlined by a very distinguishable rightward leaning backward question mark.
Saturn is a lot farther away than it was earlier this year but is still well worth a gander through a telescope, even a smaller one. It’s now more than 880 million miles away, but you can still get a decent view of the planet and its ring system.
At first glance Saturn looks like a disk with a stick running through it. That’s because Saturn’s rings are on edge from our view on Earth. Since the ring system is only about 50 to 60 feet thick, there isn’t much to see when it’s edgewise. This happens every fourteen years
Later on this summer Saturn’s rings will totally disappear, but by that time Saturn will be too close to the sun for any of the planet to be seen. Saturn’s ring system is made up of billions of rocks and boulders from one or two of Saturn’s moons that exploded early in the history of the solar system. They got too close to Saturn and were ripped to smithereens by Saturn’s tidal forces.
If you lie back on that reclining lawn chair and look straight overhead toward the zenith you’ll easily see the Big Dipper, and not far from the dipper’s handle you’ll see a bright orange star. That’s Arcturus, the second brightest star in the sky, which is about 36 light years or 208 trillion miles away (give or take a billion miles).
The light that we see tonight from Arcturus, almost 70 times the diameter of our sun, left that star when Richard Nixon was president. Arcturus is also the brightest star in the constellation Bootes, the hunting farmer, which actually looks more like a giant nocturnal kite with Arcturus at the tail of the kite.
In the low southern skies, about 10 p.m., you’ll see another ruddy star. That’s Antares, a star so big that if you put it in our solar system instead of the sun, it’s outer edge would reach almost to Jupiter.
We’d be somewhere near the inner core of Antares, the star at the heart of the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. Look to the upper right of Antares for three stars lined up diagonally that mark the head and stinger of the great sky beast.
Jupiter, Venus and Mars can all be seen with the naked eye in the early morning hours. In fact Venus and Mars are going to put on quite a show this month in the low eastern morning sky. This coming week Venus and Mars will be separated by less than 5 degrees. By the summer solstice on June 21, the planets will be practically touching each other in the predawn eastern sky.
The full moon this month is on June 8 and will be on the farthest track to the south that a full moon will take in 2009. About three days on either side of this date stargazing will be seriously washed out by moonlight, so just enjoy the moon.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.
The Everett Astronomical Society welcomes new members at www.everettastro.org.
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