Special to CosmicTribune.com, July 15, 2024

Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report.

SUNDAY, JULY 14

■ Uranus is in conjunction with Mars fairly low in the east before dawn on Monday morning July 15th. The two planets are magnitudes 5.8 and 0.9, respectively. Just before dawn Monday morning, use binoculars or a telescope to spot Uranus 0.6° to the north (upper left) of Mars.

The disk of Uranus is super-tiny, 3.5 arcseconds wide, but that’s enough to appear nonstellar at high power in a telescope if the seeing is even halfway decent.

Plan to start observing a little more than 2 hours before your local sunrise, to catch the planet pair at its highest before dawn gets under way.

MONDAY, JULY 15

■ Low in the northwest or north at the end of these long summer twilights, would you recognize noctilucent clouds if you saw them?

They’re the most astronomical of all cloud types, with their extreme altitude and, sometimes, formation on meteoric dust particles. And they’re fairly rare — though becoming more common in recent years as the atmosphere changes.

TUESDAY, JULY 16

■ The waxing gibbous Moon shines low in the south-southwest after dark. Look less than a fist to its left for orange Antares. Between Antares and the Moon is the tall, vertical row of three stars marking Scorpius’s head.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 17

■ As summer progresses, bright Arcturus moves down the western side of the evening sky. Its pale ginger-ale tint always helps identify it.

Arcturus forms the bottom point of the Kite of Boötes. The Kite, rather narrow, extends upper right from Arcturus by 23°, about two fists at arm’s length. The lower right side of the kite is dented inward, as if some celestial intrusion collided with it. The head of the kite tilts toward the Big Dipper.

THURSDAY, JULY 18

■ Fourth star of the Summer Triangle. The next-brightest star near the Summer Triangle, if you want to turn it into a quadrilateral, is Rasalhague, the head of Ophiuchus. Face south not long after dark. You’ll find Rasalhague about equally far to the right of Altair and lower right of Vega.

FRIDAY, JULY 19

■ The nearly full Moon tonight shines in the handle of the Sagittarius Teapot. Cover the Moon with your fingertip to help reveal the stars near it.

SATURDAY, JULY 20

■ Full Moon this evening and Sunday evening. (The Moon is exactly full at 6:16 a.m. Sunday morning EDT, nearly splitting the difference between the two evenings.) Tonight the Moon shines low between the Sagittarius Teapot to its right and the dim boat shape of Capricornus to its left (which will be hard to piece out through the moonlight).

SUNDAY, JULY 21

■ The low Moon this evening forms a huge, nearly vertical line with Altair about three fists above it and Vega the same distance above Altair, near the zenith.

PLANET ROUNDUP

Mercury at dusk is not an easy catch even at about magnitude +0.2. Look for it quite low in the west-northwest during bright twilight, as shown below. Don’t confuse it with twinklier Regulus, now departing for the season. They’re a wide 14° apart on July 12th as shown here, but the gap closes to 5½° by July 19th. Bring binoculars.

Mercury remains brighter but lower than Regulus all week.

Venus is even deeper in evening twilight, 14° to Mercury’s lower right all week (a little more than a fist at arm’s length). Try for Venus a mere 20 minutes after sunset, and use those binoculars. At least Venus is bright: magnitude –3.9.

Mars (magnitude +0.9, at the Aries-Taurus border) rises around 2 a.m. daylight-saving time and glows in the east before and during early dawn. It’s about 1½ fists upper right of bright Jupiter, and roughly half as far lower right or right of the Pleiades, as shown below. The Pleiades soon become lost from sight once dawn gets under way.

Mars is on the far side of its orbit from us, so in a telescope it’s just a tiny fuzzblob 5.6 arcseconds wide.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.0, in Taurus) glares in the east-northeast before and during early dawn lower left of Mars, as shown below.

Jupiter, Mars, and Mars’s close mimic Aldebaran are up in good view just before and during early dawn.

Saturn (magnitude 1.0, near the Aquarius-Pisces border) rises around 11 p.m. and stands high in the south-southeast before dawn. Spot the Great Square of Pegasus two fists upper left of it, and Fomalhaut two fists lower right of it.

  July 14-21: Planets on parade, The Sky