Tuesday, June 17, 2008

the skies of june 2008

TONIGHT, the nearly full moon and the bright star, antares line up.

WEDNESDAY, june 18th, reveals june's full moon!

THURSDAY night, june 19th, begins the ascent of the moon near jupiter. the two rise above the south-eastern horizon late in the evening with the very bright jupiter to the left of the moon. jupiter reaches opposition on july 9th (when the sun, earth and jupiter line up with earth in the middle), so it is very bright in our sky these days! this would be a great night for some late-night binocular or telescope viewing! try to find the 4 galilean moons of jupiter and guess which is which!


FRIDAY marks the summer solstice and the longest day of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere. this (early solstice) is the day the sun is as far north in the sky as it will get all year. those in the southern hemisphere celebrate their winter solstice as they begin to welcome longer days each day of the rest of the year!

SATURDAY, june 21st, is the first official day of summer in the north.... but it has been a brutually hot spring in this part of the world so i'm not really thrilled about the official hot season just beginning now!

SUNDAY night, look to the west just at sunset to see a beautiful trio of saturn, the star regulus, and the planet mars (upper left to lower right) with saturn being the brightest!

enjoy!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

tnx for the fantastic job...
Jupitor is so bright these days and clearly seen

while Saturn makes a lovely add to the leo stars
when u see it u think sth wrong with ur memory!
Leo isnt like this!
thats true
a new member in the leo constellation... its the lovely Saturn

Anonymous said...

Thanks to this website/blog I now know what is so bright in the s.western sky the last couple of nights around 11pm-12am.Thanks
(Jupiter)

-V