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(NASA photo)
With the holidays of July 4th here, many of you will be on vacation and will travel in cooler and darker skies!
Even if you are still tied to the city, you have a great opportunity to see an incredible range of bright planets in our big Arizona skies.
In the past month, the movements of these wandering stars, known as planets, allow you to see five of the largest planets in the solar system
this, looking for a place which has the darkest sky and the best view of the northwest sky. With monsoons just around the corner, try a cloudless night!
The first of the planets on our menu is the one and only world we know as Planet Mercury. Only 36,000,000 miles from the Sun with a diameter of about 3,100 miles.
Mercury arrives at its best lengthening of the evening to July 12 and will be easy to see at 26 degrees from the Sun.
Binoculars will help to see this amazing little planet.
From there, follow a Mercury arc on the upper left and you will come to Bright Venus. It is the second planet of the Sun and although it is the size of the Earth, Venus is too hot and locked in the clouds.
Venus will become brighter in the sky over the next few months. Venus is now some 90,000,000 miles from Earth.
From there, follow the arc of Mercury and Venus and look south on this arc. You will then arrive at the incredible giant planet Jupiter.
Jupiter is some 450,000,000 miles away from you and the light takes about 40 minutes to go from Jupiter to Earth.
If you have binoculars, you will be able to see some of Jupiter's moons, one that is larger than the planet Mercury, known as Ganymede. This magical arc in the sky is known as the path of the ecliptic, the path of the Sun, the Moon and planets. The signs of the zodiac named!
Now it's starting to be even more exciting, as you follow that arc, down in the southeast sky, as you see the Zodiac constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius, near the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way
The next planet in the naked eye is Saturn.
Saturn adorns the upper area of the constellation Sagittarius the Archer.
Bright and easy to see with the naked eye, it is about 800 000 kilometers from the Earth.
The best view of Saturn will be in a small telescope because the incredible ring system will amaze you!
We have kept the best for the end, as Mars will illuminate the southeast sky at 10 pm
Mars is running towards its best view for a couple of decades since it's will arrive at 35,785,537 miles on July 31st.
Mars is a great thing to see in your telescope despite a major dust storm on the planet.
Mars will not be so close until September 11, 2035, so do not miss this close encounter of 2018.
Now, with clear skies, you have observed five of the eight major planets on our planet. solar system! Congratulations!
To print your own July 2018 star chart, click here
To see the satellites / dates / times of passage, click here
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