What's new in August: The brightest planets will be visible all month

The beginning of this month marks the middle of summer. The nights continue to lengthen as we slowly approach the fall, giving us more time under the stars and planets and other celestial wonders that always happen above us.

This month is richer than usual the time you can enjoy, observe and understand these events. The four brightest planets will illuminate our evening skies throughout the month. They will be nearly equally spaced across the sky and all visible at the same time, which is quite unusual. Not only are they all visible at once, but they are all close to the opposition when they are at their best and closest to the Earth.

The Perseid meteor shower will have optimal conditions this summer near the new moon. You can expect about 50 meteors per hour under a dark sky. As a bonus, another comet enters our field of vision. He calls 21P / Giacobini-Zinner and he comes back every 6.5 years. It can brighten to visibility at the naked eye, but you will probably need binoculars or a telescope to see it. A partial solar eclipse will occur on parts of northern Europe and from Asia to the new moon this month, since we are still in an eclipse season.

We begin our evening tour with Venus. Our sister planet continues to brighten by catching us in our sunbeams. It will reach the largest eastern elongation of the sun on the 17th. This means that it will be exactly half-lighted, similar to a last-quarter moon, but it will continue to be brighter and bigger after that period, even when it's over. 39, it becomes less illuminated by the sun. Watch as Venus catches Spica in Virgo. The pair will be distant only one degree on the last day of the month half an hour after sunset in the western evening sky

Then continue along the ecliptic constellation to the east and you will meet Jupiter in Libra. The King of the Planets is the farthest from the opposition of this great quartet of brilliant planets, all visible at once throughout the month. Jupiter was in opposition on May 10, so it gets a little smaller and weaker now that we leave it further into our respective orbits around the sun.

Know that we recently discovered 12 other moons of Jupiter looking for new planets at the edge of our solar system. One of these moons is orbiting the planet in the opposite direction of a large group of moons in orbit further from Jupiter, so it will probably crash into one of these moons soon . All news is only one or two miles away.

We are now at 79 moons, which is the highest of all the planets in our solar system. Juno still receives great images and sounds of Jupiter and it should be there until 2021.

Then continue another 25 degrees east along the ecliptic through Scorpius in Sagittarius and your eyes will land on Saturn. Just after a month of opposition, the ring planet is still moving retrograde or to the west. Notice that it will fall right before reaching the beautiful nebulae of Trifid and Lagoon along an arm of the Milky Way just above the center of our galaxy, located 30,000 light-years away . These two blurry spots in our sky are visible even without a telescope.

However, I recommend using a telescope or a good pair of binoculars to better appreciate these colorful stellar nurseries located about 5000 light-years away.

Then continue another 20 degrees or more in the nearby constellation of Capricorn and you will encounter a most astonishing spectacle. While Mars rises from the ocean at sunset, it can almost be considered a second sun, even though it is over 100 times smaller. Its remarkable golden-orange hue will be more reddened by our atmosphere until it becomes higher in our sky as the earth continues to turn. At only 35.8 million miles, Mars is closer, bigger and brighter now than at any other time since August 2003, when the red planet was at its best in 60,000 years, when humans modern people were leaving Africa. stay brighter than Jupiter all month, which is also very unusual. The last time I watched it through a telescope, I saw some dark marks on its surface with a hint of the two polar ice caps. Try to catch some of these details before huge dust storms engulf these features. This is what is called perihelic opposition because Mars is also closest to the sun at the same time as it is closest to the Earth. Although Mars will reach its next opposition in just 26 months in October 2020, while we will also launch the next mission on Mars, it will not be as close as it is currently until August. 2287

. Catch as many Perseids as possible. this month. Caused by Comet Swift-Tuttle, you could expect 50 meteors per hour at its peak in the early hours of Sunday 12. This comet only returns once every 133 years, and it came back in 1992. That means that we will not have higher meteor levels caused by the proximity of the current comet, but at least there will be no moon to interfere with our vision. Watch as these tiny grains of comet dust the size of a grain of sand burn in our atmosphere, leaving bright streaks of ionized light caused by their high speed of 40 miles per second, twice the speed are in orbit around the sun. The Perseids can be seen anytime during this month, but they will reach their maximum on the 12th. If you can go up the meteor up to Perseus in the sky, it will rise around 11pm. in the northeast, you know that it was caused by this comet when we cross its trail of dust and debris each year.

A partial solar eclipse will take place at the new moon this month over Northern Europe and Asia. Only 75 percent of the sun will be covered to the max, so this will look nothing like Total Solar's unique eclipse of last summer. Seeing and photographing this eclipse has given me a much more real sense of where we are in the solar system, and the extremely fast and continuous movement we are still going through.

The incredible power of our sun dominated the whole other world scene as its sparkling and ethereal crown sent streamers stretching millions of miles into space, many times the diameter of its source. I felt the shadow of the huge moon sweeping across the landscape of the Upper Teton Valley, in eastern Idaho, at nearly three times the speed of sound. This only sets the stage for the next 139 seconds of the most sublime experience you could imagine. The planets and a few stars have emerged instantly with a 360-degree sunset around us, giving me a complete sense of the earth's invigorating atmosphere all at once, far from any sunrise or sunset, also beautiful be it.

I was transported from this familiar planet into a whole new world while all the time created by man was motionless in this eternal moment of beauty and grace. An infinitely luminous and numinous universe, so far above all human comprehension, has been revealed for a moment. No one can remain unchanged after such an experience.

AUGUST HIGHLIGHTS

Aug. 1: Maria Mitchell was born that day in 1818. She established the orbit of a new comet and made many other significant contributions to astronomy, becoming the first astronomer American professional.

Aug. 4: Phoenix's mission on Mars was launched today in 2007. The last quarter moon is at 14:19

August. 6: The Curiosity Rover was launched on Mars this day in 2012.

Aug. 11: The new moon is at 05:59

August. 12: The Perseid meteorite rain reaches its summit this Sunday morning

August 13: The moon is just above Venus tonight.

Aug. 18: The moon of the first quarter is at 3:50

August. 20: The moon is near Saturn tonight.

Aug. 25: The Spitzer infrared telescope was launched today in 2003.

August. 26: The full moon is at 7:51 in the morning. It is also called the sturgeon or the grain moon. Mercury can be seen low in the morning morning sky.

Aug. 31: Venus is just a degree below Spica in Virgo tonight 30 minutes after sunset.

Wells Bernie Reim is co-director of the Northern New England Astronomical Society

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