Take a look at the sky this week, July 13 to 21

Friday, July 13

• Cassiopeia is now well past its annual high point to the north. Look for his pattern climbing low in the north-northeast after dark. The further north you live, the higher it will be.

Saturday, July 14

• As dusk fades, see if you can catch the Moon above Mercury very low in the west, well at the bottom right of Venus. shown here. Your best view can be about 45 minutes after sunset.

• One hour after sunset, as dusk fades and the stars come out, you will find the two brightest stars of the summer, Vega and Arcturus. zenith: Vega to the east, shining a pale bluish white, and Arcturus to the southwest, pale yellow-orange.

Sunday, July 15

• Moon and Venus: a charming couple spectacularly to the west during the twilight will be quite eye-catcher: Venus and the crescent moon paired closely. How depends closely on where you are. Seen at twilight time in the eastern time zone of North America, they will appear at about 2 ° each from the other. Seen from the west, they will be less than 1 ° apart.

Also, look carefully a little lower right for Regulus who flickers. It's a little less than 1% as bright as Venus. You may also be able to catch Mercury much lower right. A line from Venus to Regulus points directly to Mercury;

Monday, July 16

• Now the lunar crescent at twilight shines in the upper left of Venus. Its sunny bulge points towards almost directly towards Venus – and, as always, exactly right towards the Sun.

Tuesday, July 17

• The Star Scorpius is sometimes referred to as "The Orion of Summer" for its prominent radiance and red supergiant (Antares in the case of Scorpius, Betelgeuse for Orion). But Scorpius goes much lower in the southern sky on the July nights than does Orion in the winter (for those of us in the middle latitudes of the north.) That means there is no has a very good month: July. just after the night now, before it begins to tilt further south-west. It is full of deep sky objects to hunt with a good atlas of the sky and binoculars or a telescope.

Wednesday, July 18

• The Moon at dusk shines at the top right of Spica. Look very high above the Moon for brighter Arcturus. Far to the right of Arcturus lies the Big Dipper.

• The Cygnus Milky Way is elevated to the east at dusk and passes overhead late at night. The star of the heart of Cygnus, and the center of the North Cross, is Sadr (Gamma Cygni) of second magnitude, slamming in the middle of the Milky Way. The binoculars will show the roughly heart-shaped ring of faint stars around and including it. Explore this area with Matt Wedel's Column and Highlight Binocular Highlight in the Sky and July Telescope page 43.

Thursday, July 19

• Moon of the first quarter (accurate to 15:52 eastern daylight time). The moon shines in the southwest at dusk, with Spica lower right and Jupiter on his left. Draw a line about twice as far from Jupiter and you will reach Antares, passing the Delta Scorpii on the way.

Friday, July 20th

• The Waxing Gibbous Moon jupiter on Jupiter tonight. Left of Jupiter of only 2 ° is the large binocular double star Alpha Librae, magnitudes 2.8 and 5.1.

The Moon is 1.3 second light from us, Jupiter is 44 minutes light in the background, and Alpha Librae's two stars are 77 light-years behind them.

Saturday, July 21

• Jupiter and the little Alpha Librae shine in the bottom right of the Moon tonight. At the bottom of the Moon is Antares, with other Scorpius stars scattered

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Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They are the key to locating anything that is weaker and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the entire evening sky, use the large monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope the essential guide to astronomy.

Once you have a telescope, to put it to use, you will need a detailed atlas of large-scale sky (set of maps). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars at magnitude 7.6.

Next, the largest and deepest Sky Atlas 2000.0 reporting the stars at magnitude 8.5; almost three times more. The next, once you know your way, are the largest Interstellarum atlas (stars at magnitude 9.5) and Uranometria 2000.0 (stars at magnitude 9.75) . And read how to use the sky charts with a telescope

You'll also need a good deep sky guide, like the 1945-1912 collection of Sue French Deep-Sky Wonders (which includes its own maps), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion of Strong and Sinnott, or the largest Guide to observing the night sky of Kepple and Sanner .

Can a computerized telescope replace cards? ] Not for beginners, I do not think, and not on mounts and tripods that are not of good mechanical quality (which means heavy and expensive). And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide "A full appreciation of the universe can come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understand how the sky works spending time under the stars with cards in hand. "

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The Roundup of the Planet

Still Erased by the Dust! It is the Sinus Sabaeus Side of Mars, Imagined by Damian Peach on July 9. "This hemisphere is completely unrecognizable," he writes.The North is rising

The Great Red Spot of Jupiter was on the central meridian when Christopher Go in the Philippines took this image on June 28 with a range of 14 inches.Southern is rising.Note the large blue spots in the northern part of the equatorial zone around this longitude. (The longitude of System II on the central meridian is also 291 °.) Note also the exceptionally prominent tan equatorial band Near the left lower limb is the shadow of Io.

Saturn to the opposition l June 27, pictured by Damian Peach with Chilescope 1 meter in medium vision. Note the extra brightness of the rings in opposition to the globe. This is what is called the Seeliger effect. In 1887, the German astronomer Hugo von Seeliger analyzed what he could say about the composition of the rings. South is rising

Mercury low in the afterglow of the sunset, fades this week from magnitude +0.4 to +1.1 while sinking even lower. Look for it in the west-northwest, about 18 ° down right on Venus, about 30 minutes after sunset. The twins help, especially at the end of the week.

Venus (magnitude -4.2, in Leo) shines brightly in the west during twilight, although lower every week. He goes to bed now after dark. Look for Regulus (magnitude +1.4) further and further down right, and Mercury further down right. In a telescope, Venus is a gibbous disc with 18 seconds of arc and 64% of sun

March is the planet "star" of the summer! It's a blazing blaze of fire like nothing else in the night sky. At about -2.6 magnitude and growing, it even surpasses Jupiter.

Mars rises in the southeast during twilight. After dark, it is a strange anomaly to the southeast, in southern Capricorn. Mars is the highest in the south, in the best telescopic view, around 2 am and begins to descend in the southwest at dawn. Its diameter is 23 arc seconds, en route to 24.3 arc seconds for the week around its closest approach in the night of July 30-31.

But Mars remains in a dust storm ! still envelops the globe, obscuring most of the familiar features of the dark surface. The dust should remain in the Martian atmosphere by the opposition and long after. See our article Big Dust Storm Explodes on Mars

Can you identify markings in your application scope? Or just, maybe, a thin line of high altitude white cloud near the poles? Use our Mars Profiler.

Vesta, the most brilliant asteroid, is still of magnitude 6.0 in the south of Ophiuchus at some 10 ° west of Saturn. . The article and graphics of research: Vesta is near and bright

Jupiter (magnitude -2.2, in Libra) shines in the south-southwest at dusk, between Spica about 20 ° to his right and Scorpius' upper head distance similar to his left. Catch him with your reach even before the end of twilight, before he starts to move seriously lower. Jupiter narrowed to 40 seconds of arcs

Saturn (magnitude +0.1, above the teapot of Sagittarius) shines yellow in the south-southeast at the end of twilight and more high in the south around 11 or midnight. It is at 32 ° in the upper right of Mars much brighter

Uranus (magnitude 5.8, at the Aries-Pisces border) and Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius ) are well placed to the southeast side of the sky in the hour before the start of dawn. Finder Charts for Uranus and Neptune

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All descriptions that relate to your horizon – including the words up, down, right and left – are written for the middle latitudes of the world. The descriptions that also depend on the longitude (mainly the positions of the moon) are for North America.

Daylight Saving Time (EDT) is UTC (UT, UTC, GMT or Z) minus 4 hours

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"Remember to look at the stars and not at your feet, try to make sense of what you see and ask yourself what makes the universe exist."
– Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018

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"The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater than ever: it is not that there is any something new in our way of thinking, it is this gullible and confused thinking "
– Carl Sagan, 1996

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" The objective reality exists, the facts are often determinable, Vaccines save lives, carbon dioxide warms the world Bacteria evolve to thwart antibiotics, because evolution, science and reason are not a political conspiracy, they are how we determine the facts. survival of civilization depends on our ability and our willingness to do so. "
– Alan MacRobert, publisher of Sky at a Glance

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" The facts are stubborn things. "[19659059] – John Adams, 1770 [196] 59069] [ad_2]
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