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I love this time of year because we still have a lot of summer and the nights are getting a little longer. There is almost a full hour of night and the sky is dark enough for stargazing before 10pm. The skies of late summer are filled with heavenly jewels and the month of August also brings us three great planets!
The March show is without a doubt the flagship event of the month of August, despite a historic dust storm. Normally, Mars is the only planet in our solar system whose surface can be seen through a telescope, but that will not happen this time because experts predict that the dust storm will continue for the next few months.
Mars might know all the headlines in August, but Jupiter and Saturn are also fantastic targets with the moons of Jupiter and Saturn's ring system. As night falls, Jupiter shines in the south-southwest sky and Saturn is just below left in the south-southeast skies. Jupiter is almost as bright as Mars. Meanwhile, the very bright planet Venus appears in the very low sky of the west in the evening twilight, but goes down soon after.
In addition to the planet show, we also have a meteor shower to catch in August. The Perseid meteor shower, one of the best meteorite rains of the year, peaks early next week, around August 11th to 13th. It will be wonderful this year because the moon will be pretty much out of the sky by then, and the meteors, or "shooting stars," will be much more visible in the darker skies. I will have more about the Perseids next week.
With Mars, Saturn and Jupiter, the southern low sky of August is the home of classical constellations. There is Scorpius Scorpion with the bright red star Antares in the heart of Scorpio. It's one of those few constellations that looks like what it's supposed to be. In the southeastern low sky is Sagittarius, which is supposed to be a half-man / half-horse pulling an arrow. Forget that. Most people I know refer to it by its nickname, "The Teapot".
The brightest star of the night sky is Arcturus, which is parked in the sky of the west. Arcturus is also the brightest star of the Bootes the Hunting Farmer constellation. Bootes looks more like a giant kite, with the reddish-orange star Arcturus at the tail of the kite.
The second brightest star in the evening skies is Vega, the bright star in a small, light constellation called Lyra Lyre, or Harp. Vega is a brilliant bluish white star perched above the eastern sky, almost overhead. Vega and the weak little parallelogram just at the bottom of Vega are supposed to outline a celestial harp in the sky. If you are calm enough, you can even hear the music.
As you continue to look east, you will notice two other bright stars that form a triangle with Vega. This is what is called the "summer triangle". The star at the bottom left of Vega is Deneb, the brightest star of Cygnus the Swan, otherwise known as the "Northern Cross," for obvious reasons. The star at the bottom right of Vega is Altair, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila Eagle.
In the northern sky, we have the famous dippers. The Big Dipper, which is actually the back end and tail of the Big Bear Ursa Major, is lazily hanging by its handle, or tail if you please, in the northwest sky . The Little Dipper, which is the same as the Little Dipper, is standing on its handle and is much darker than the Big Dipper. Unfortunately, it is almost invisible in the metropolitan area, with the exception of the outer ring of the suburbs. The only really bright star in the Little Dipper is Polaris, otherwise known as the North Star, at the end of the handle.
Polaris is not the brightest star in the sky, but it's the "lynch" every star and planet, including the sun and the moon, seem to revolve around it every 24 hours. This is because Polaris shines directly above the North Pole of the Earth, and while our world is spinning, all the stars appear to be spinning around the Polar Star.
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