Nan at Night by Nancy Hoyt
-Thursday the 2nd: (Happy 21st Dave!) Look to the south at first light and site our largest neighbor in the solar system (outside of the Sun!), the planet Jupiter. Jupiter is one of the brightest objects in our night sky excluding only the Sun, Moon and Venus. It looks like a brilliant cream-colored star.
-Friday the 3rd: It is truly summer when you can spot the “heart” of the scorpion as twilight falls. Look a little to the lower left of the moon and you will find orange-red Antares blazing in the sky. Antares is about 600 light-years away. It is one of the largest and brightest stars in the galaxy. Earth is at aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun for the year.
-Saturday the 4th: Happy 4th of July! Since we don’t allow personal fireworks in the mountains due to the extreme fire danger, look to the sky tonight for your “show!” The Big Dipper is an easy constellation to locate in the northwestern sky as night falls. Notice how its bowl is spilling toward the horizon. Follow the two stars that form the outer edge of the bowl to the right to find our pole star, Polaris, more familiarly known as the North Star. If you were standing on the north pole of Earth, it would be directly above you!
-Sunday the 5th: Follow the moon as it passes across the heart of the Milky Way galaxy tonight. It lines up with the “spout” of the teapot-shaped constellation Sagittarius. The center of our galaxy is in that same direction, about 27,000 light-years away!
-Monday the 6th: Full moon tonight! Watch as it rolls across the southern sky. The full Moon of July is known as the Hay Moon, the Thunder Moon, or the Buck Moon, as the new velvety antlers of buck deer are forming. Since this is the month in which humans first landed on the Moon, it seems appropriate to add “Apollo Moon” to the list as well.
-Tuesday the 7th: Leo the lion is making his exit stage left as it plunges nose first toward the western horizon at twilight. Regulus, the alpha star of Leo, is low in the sky, with the lion’s body stretching above it. Leo’s tail, the star Denebola, is well above Regulus. The moon is at apogee, its farthest point from Earth this cycle.
-Wednesday the 8th: Don’t forget to keep those outside lights shielded or off this summer, your neighbors will thank you as well as the creatures of the night! Thank you from us stargazers!
When we think of the Earth orbiting around the Sun we often visualize a perfect circle. In actuality the orbital path is more of an oval, which results in the Earth being somewhat closer to the Sun at one time of year and farther away at another. It may surprise you that we are reaching our farthest point from the Sun this Friday, July 3rd during what seems like the hottest time of our year. This phenomenon is termed aphelion and occurs once a year, usually near the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. On January 4th this year we reached perihelion, which is our closest position to the Sun. Perihelion usually occurs sometime near the winter solstice in our Hemisphere. What we often forget is that “down under” the equator it is winter while we experience our enjoyable hot summers. The seasons of our planet are actually determined by the “tilt” of the Earth on its journey around the Sun. During the summer months in the Northern Hemisphere, the northern half of the Earth is “tilted” toward the Sun, even though we are at our farthest point from our star. Consequently, in the winter, we are tilted away even though we are closest to the Sun in the Northern Hemisphere. We are fortunate to live on a planet with such astoundingly perfect conditions for life…I wonder how many more there are out there?
