Special to CosmicTribune.com, July 8, 2025

Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report.

The bright Moon crosses Scorpius and the Sagittarius Teapot for four nights.

MONDAY, JULY 7

■ To casual starwatchers or those with an obstructed northern view, Cassiopeia in July might sound as wrong as Christmas in July. But already Cas has passed its lowest evening position of the year and is gradually gaining altitude in preparation for the coming fall and winter. Look for its flattened W shape low in the north-northeast after dark, no longer level.

TUESDAY, JULY 8

■ After nightfall, Altair shines in the east-southeast. It’s the second-brightest star on the whole eastern side of the sky, after Vega high to its upper left.

Above Altair by a finger-width at arm’s length is little orange Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae), Altair’s eternal sidekick. It’s a modest magnitude 2.7 compared to Altair’s showy 0.7. But looks are deceiving. Altair looks so bright because it’s one of our near neighbors, just 17 light-years away. Tarazed is an orange giant star about 380 light-years farther in the background — and it’s 170 times as luminous as Altair!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 9

■ After nightfall, look due south for orange Antares nearly on the meridian. Around and upper right of Antares are the other, whiter stars forming the distinctive pattern of upper Scorpius. The rest of the Scorpion runs down from Antares toward the horizon, then left.

Three doubles at the top of Scorpius. The head of Scorpius — the near-vertical row of three stars upper right of Antares — stands nearly vertical. The top star of the row is Beta Scorpii or Graffias: a fine double star for telescopes, separation 13 arcseconds, magnitudes 2.8 and 5.0.

Near Antares, three nice double stars and the globular cluster M4 await small-telescope users. Akira Fujii took this photo before Delta Scorpii entered its historic brightening.

Just 1° below it is the very wide naked-eye pair Omega and Omega Scorpii. They’re 4th magnitude and ¼° apart. Binoculars show their slight color difference; they’re spectral types B9 and G2.

Upper left of Beta by 1.6° is Nu Scorpii, separation 41 arcseconds, magnitudes 3.8 and 6.5. In fact it’s a telescopic triple. High power in good seeing reveals Nu’s brighter component itself to be a close binary, separation 2 arcseconds, magnitudes 4.0 and 5.3, aligned almost north-south.

THURSDAY, JULY 10

■ Full Moon (exactly full at 4:37 p.m. EDT). The full Moon of July was traditionally called the Buck Moon in northeastern colonial America. Says the Old Farmer’s Almanac, “At this time the antlers of bucks (male deer) are in full growth mode. This Native American name was noted by Captain Jonathan Carver during his travels in the 1760s.”

■ More Scorpius: To the right of Antares is that roughly vertical row of Beta, Delta, and fainter Pi Scorpii. The middle one, Delta Sco, is the brightest — obviously so. But it didn’t used to be. It used to be a trace fainter than Beta.

Delta is a strange variable star, a fast-rotating blue subgiant throwing off luminous gas from its equator. Assumed for centuries to be stable, Delta doubled in brightness unexpectedly in summer 2000, then dipped down and up again several times from 2005 to 2010, and has remained essentially steady at peak brightness (magnitude 1.7) ever since.

Delta has a smaller orbiting companion star that was suspected to trigger activity at 10.5-year intervals. Astronomers watched to see whether the system would have another flareup around 2022, when the companion star made its third pass by the primary star since 2000. But nothing happened. No one knows what might happen next, or when.

FRIDAY, JULY 11

■ One hour after sunset, as twilight is fading and the stars are coming out, you’ll find the two brightest stars of summer, Vega and Arcturus, equally near the zenith: Vega toward the east, Arcturus toward the southwest.

Venus now forms a temporary, dazzling second eye of the V-shaped Taurus face, completely outdoing Aldebaran! To see the entire 4th-magnitude V pattern look earlier in the dawn than illustrated, maybe 1 hour 15 minutes before sunrise. Think photo opportunity!

SATURDAY, JULY 12

■ Vega is the brightest star in the eastern side of the sky. Three fists lower right of it is Altair, the second-brightest star in that region.

Above Altair by a finger-width at arm’s length is little orange Tarazed (Gamma Aquilae), Altair’s eternal sidekick. It’s a modest magnitude 2.7 compared to Altair’s showy 0.7. But looks are deceiving. Altair looks so bright because it’s one of our near neighbors, just 17 light-years away. Tarazed is an orange giant star about 380 light-years farther in the background — and it’s 170 times more luminous than Altair!

SUNDAY, JULY 13

■ Combine Vega and Altair with Deneb, less bright and about two fists lower left of Vega, and you’ve got the Summer Triangle.

■ Scorpius is sometimes called “the Orion of Summer” for its brightness, its blue-white giant stars, and its red supergiant. But Scorpius passes a lot lower across the southern sky than Orion does, for those of us at mid-northern latitudes. That means it has only one really good evening month: July.

The rich area around the tail of Scorpius is now at its highest in the south right after night is fully dark, as shown below. Find it lower right of the Teapot’s spout by a fist at arm’s length or less. Or about a fist and a half lower left of Antares. How high or low this whole scene will appear depends on how far north or south you live: the farther south, the higher.

Shaula and Lesath in the tail of Scorpius are the Cat’s Eyes. Halfway between them and the spout of the Teapot is the big bright open cluster M7, one of the finest in the sky — if you can see this low to the south! Nearly 4° upper right of M7 is smaller, more modest M6. And the Cat’s Eyes point west (right) to Mu Scorpii, a much closer pair known as the Little Cat’s Eyes. Stellarium

Spot the two stars especially close together in the tail. These are Shaula and Lesath, Lambda and Upsilon Scorpii, also known as the Cat’s Eyes. They’re unequal and canted at an angle; the cat has a bleary eye and is tilting his head to the right. They’re magnitudes 1.6 and 2.6. Both are blue-white supergiants, 700 and 500 light years away, respectively. The fainter one, Lesath, is the nearer one.

Between the Cat’s Eyes and the Teapot’s spout are the open star clusters M7 and especially M6, showy speckle-splashes in binoculars. M7 is the bigger and brighter one; M6 is more subdued.

Also: A line through the Cat’s Eyes points west (right) by nearly a fist toward Mu Scorpii, a much tighter pair known as the Little Cat’s Eyes. They’re oriented almost exactly the same way as Lambda and Upsilon, but they’re only 0.1° apart, so they appear as a single dot on the chart above; bring binoculars. They too are not a true binary. They’re 800 and 500 light-years away, and again the fainter one is nearer.

  July 7-13: Close neighbor Altair (only 17 light years) in southeast, The Sky