Special to CosmicTribune.com, June 30, 2024

Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report.

SATURDAY, JUNE 29

■ Right at nightfall, look for the Big Dipper hanging straight down in the northwest. Its bottom two stars, the Pointers, point to the right toward modest Polaris, the end of the Little Dipper’s handle, due north.

SUNDAY, JUNE 30

If you examine the west-northwest horizon in bright twilight day by day, when do you first pick up Mercury? Venus?

■ Dangling lower right from bright Vega high in the east after dark are the main stars of Lyra, forming a small triangle and parallelogram. The two brightest stars of this pattern after Vega are the two forming the bottom of the parallelogram: Beta and Gamma Lyrae, Sheliak and Sulafat. They’re currently lined up vertically. Beta is the one on top. Beta Lyrae is an eclipsing binary.

And now the waning crescent Moon joins those morning planets.

MONDAY, JULY 1

■ Right after nightfall, look due south for orange Antares on the meridian. Around and upper right of Antares are the other, whiter stars forming the distinctive upper-Scorpius pattern.

■ Three doubles in the top of Scorpius. The “head of Scorpius” is the near-vertical row of three stars upper right of Antares. The top star of the row is Beta (ß) Scorpii or Graffias: a fine double star for telescopes, separation 13 arcseconds, magnitudes 2.8 and 5.0.

Just 1° below Beta is the fainter, very wide naked-eye pair Omega¹ and Omega² Scorpii, tilted to the right of vertical. They’re 4th magnitude and ¼° apart.

Upper left of Beta by 1.6° is Nu Scorpii, separation 41 arcseconds, magnitudes 3.8 and 6.5. In fact this is 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.

TUESDAY, JULY 2

■ The two brightest stars of summer, Arcturus and Vega, are about equally high overhead right after dark: Arcturus toward the southwest, Vega toward the east. Arcturus used to be the higher one. Now Vega stakes claim to that status for the rest of the year.

■ At dawn Wednesday morning, Jupiter and the thin waning crescent Moon hang 4° or 5° apart low in the east-northeast, as shown above. Find Mars about 20° (two fists) to their upper right. Don’t wait too long or the sky will get too bright!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 3

■ 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 W shape low in the north-northeast after dark. The W is still almost level.

THURSDAY, JULY 4

■ The Big Dipper, high in the northwest, starts turning around as the night advances through the evenings of summer and early fall.

FRIDAY, JULY 5

■ The largest asteroid, 1 Ceres, is at opposition in the handle of the Sagittarius Teapot. It’s in binocular range at magnitude 7.3. Use the finder chart in the July Sky & Telescope, page 48. The ticks on its track there mark its position at 0:00 UT on the dates indicated, which for the Americas falls on the afternoon or evening of the previous date.

From now through July 12th Ceres is less than 1° from the bottom star of the Teapot’s handle. On the night of July 14th, it will be 0.6° north of the little 8th-magnitude globular cluster M54.

■ Earth is at aphelion today, its farthest from the Sun for the year, just 3.3% farther than at perihelion in January.

■ New Moon, exactly so at 6:57 p.m. EDT (22:57 UT).

SATURDAY, JULY 6

■ This evening about 20 or 30 minutes after sunset, try to sight the extremely thin young crescent Moon low in the west-northwest. Will this be your record youngest Moon? For most of North America, you’re seeing it only 25 to 28 hours old depending on where you are. Compare the time of your sighting with the time of new Moon under Friday above.

After ending one lunation and starting another, the Moon returns as an extremely thin waxing crescent very low after sunset to accompany Mercury. And maybe Venus; use binoculars.

SUNDAY, JULY 7

■ The two-day-old crescent Moon points the way down to Mercury in bright twilight, as shown above. Try for Venus too, way down farther to Mercury’s lower right. Good luck.