We're into the shortest nights of the year so good stargazing can't really begin here in Butler until after 10 p.m., and the show is pretty much over by 4:30 a.m. when morning twilight begins.

Make sure to get your afternoon nap so you can enjoy nature's late, late summer star show. Watch the stars on the rise but prepare for possible hungry mosquitoes, especially around sunset.

In most cases, the blood suckers back off by midnight or sometimes sooner.

The biggest astronomical event by far this month, if not this year, is coming late Tuesday afternoon and evening. It is the transit of Venus, when the second closest planet to our sun passes directly in front of the sun.

The last one happened in 2004, but it won't happen again until 2117. I don't know about you, but my retirement won't last that long so this literally will be our last chance to see this in our lifetimes, unless you're 2 years old and plan on putting in 105 years on this planet.

Since December, Venus has been dazzling our evening sky like a super bright beacon, but later this month we'll begin seeing it in the early morning sky. A little after 6 p.m. on Tuesday the silhouette of the 7,500-mile-wide planet, which is now only about 21 million miles from Earth, will begin its transit on the upper right limb of the sun's disk and will work its way down the right side of our home star.

Unfortunately Venus will only be about a third of the way across the sun when the sun sets shortly before 9 p.m.

It's absolutely dangerous to try and watch this directly, unless you have special solar glasses or a solar filter for your telescope.

Actually, the best way to see it is on the web and one of the sites is http://www.exploratorium.edu/venus/.

The transition to summer skies is just about complete. The stars and constellations of winter are pretty much gone, 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.

The planets Saturn and Mars are lighting up the southwest quarter of the celestial dome after evening twilight, with Saturn definitely the better telescope target.

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.

The light that we see tonight from Arcturus, almost 70 times the diameter of our sun, left that star when Richard Nixon was our 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.

In the low southern skies, around 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 our sun, its 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 and you'll see three stars lined up diagonally that mark the head and stinger of the great sky beast.

The full moon this month is officially Monday and will be nearly on the farthest track to the south that a full moon will take this year. Unfortunately, stargazing will be seriously washed out by moonlight most of this week, but it will be a whole lot better next week.

Right around 5 a.m. just before the full moon sets Monday morning, June 4th, you may notice that the lower left limb of the moon will begin to darken a bit.. It's the start of a partial lunar eclipse. but unfortunately by 6 a.m. the moon will have set below the horizon.

We're at the wrong place at the wrong time for this lunar eclipse. Too bad, because the next one won't be until April 2014.