Summer shiners are on the way
These next two months have the shortest nights of the year. Good stargazing can’t really begin until after 10 p.m., and the show is pretty much over by 4:30 a.m.
Get your afternoon nap so you can enjoy nature’s late, late summer star show and remember to have the mosquito juice at the ready!
The transition in the Butler night sky is just about complete.
The stars and constellations of winter are pretty much gone from our 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 between 9:30 and 10 p.m. you can see them side-by-side in the low northwestern sky.
The brightest “star” in the night sky this month is actually the planet Venus appearing in the low west-northwest sky even before the end of evening twilight.
Venus is so bright because it has a very reflective cloud cover.
That same poisonous cloud cover doesn’t leave much to see on Venus with any kind of backyard telescope. It’s just passing second hand sunshine our way.
For about the first half of the month in that same part of the sky you can also see the planet Mercury. During the first week or so of this month it will be the next brightest star you see just to the upper left of Venus.
Honestly, it’s not much of a telescope target either because it’s so small, at just more than 3,000 miles in diameter.
You do want to get your telescope out for Saturn. It’s a must see that you’ll love, love, love!
Look for the ringed wonder of our solar system about halfway from the horizon to the overhead zenith. Saturn is just a little to the left of the moderately bright star Spica, the bright star in the large but faint constellation Virgo the Virgin.
With even a small telescope you can easily see its ring system that spans more than 130,000 miles in diameter.
If your scope is powerful enough and the air is clear enough, you might also see many of Saturn’s moons that resemble tiny little stars.
One of the moons, Titan, is lot brighter than the rest and you should have no trouble seeing it through any scope. Titan is actually larger than the planet Mercury.
If you lie back on that reclining lawn chair and look straight overhead toward the zenith you’ll easily see the nearly upside-down Big Dipper, and not far from the end of 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 Gerald Ford 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.
Over in the eastern skies, the stars of summer are making their initial evening appearance. Leading the way is Vega, the brightest star of Lyra the Harp.
A little to the lower left of Vega is Deneb, the brightest shiner in Cygnus the Swan, otherwise known as the “Northern Cross” rising sideways in the east. Deneb lies at the head of the cross and is more than 1,500-light years from Earth. Remember, just one light-year equals almost six trillion miles!
Deneb is a moderately bright star in our sky but looks are deceiving.
It is almost 400,000 times more powerful than our sun and more than 250 million miles in diameter. Our own sun is less than a million miles in girth.
Deneb would be a whole lot brighter in our sky except that it’s so very far away. The starlight we see from Deneb this month left that star around the year 500!
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul and is author of the book, “Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at www.adventurepublications.net.
