For July 2022, The Moon is new on June 30th, and a crescent in the SW the first week of the month. First quarter moon is July 6th. The Full Moon, the Thunder Moon, is July 13th. The waning gibbous moon passes below Saturn after dusk on July 15th, and is below Jupiter in the dawn sky on July 19th. It is last quarter the following morning, and passes below Mars in the dawn on July 22nd. The waning crescent lies just above brilliant Venus in the dawn on July 26th, a fine photo op. Even better the following morning; an hour before sunrise, the thin crescent sits just right of Pollux in the Gemini, with Venus to upper right of both. It is new on July 28th, which marks the 27.3 days of the moon synodic (phase based) month, in this case, from new to next new moon.
Mercury lies behind the Sun all month. Venus is also heading there, but still visible low in the SE in the dawn this month, a brilliant gibbous disk in the telescope. She will be rising closer and closer to the Sun in the next few weeks.
Mars is in Aries in the dawn sky currently. Mars is getting closer to us nightly, and telescopic observers will find its gibbous disk becoming larger and brighter as it approaches opposition in Taurus on December 8th. This opposition will put Mars almost directly over head for us locally, but Mars will not be near perihelion and so not get as close to earth or as large in our telescopes as he did in 2003. Jupiter is in Pisces in the morning sky, and will come to opposition on September 22nd. Even small scopes and binoculars will reveal its four large Galilean moons. Saturn lies above the tail of Capricornus, and will coming to opposition next month, on August 14th, when it will rise at sunset and be brightest and closest to us. Its famed rings are currently tilted at 12 degrees for us on earth, and several of its larger moons will be visible in larger scopes.
For a detailed map of northern hemisphere skies, about June 30th visit the www.skymaps.com website and download the map for July; it will have a more extensive calendar, and list of best objects for the naked eyes, binoculars, and scopes on the back of the map.
If you drop south from the bowl of the Big Dipper, Leo the Lion is in the SW. Note the Egyptian Sphinx is based on the shape of this Lion in the sky. Taking the arc in the Dipper’s handle, we "arc" SE to bright orange Arcturus, the brightest star of Spring. Cooler than our yellow Sun, and much poorer in heavy elements, some believe its strange motion reveals it to be an invading star from another smaller galaxy. This is the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, now colliding with the Milky Way in Sagittarius in the summer sky. It lies on the far edge of our own barred spiral, and may account for the formation of our bar. Moving almost perpendicular to the plane of our Milky Way, Arcturus was the first star in the sky where its proper motion across the historic sky was noted, by Edmund Halley.
Spike south to Spica, the hot blue star in Virgo, then curve to Corvus the Crow, a four sided grouping. North of Corvus, in the arms of Virgo, is where our large scopes will show members of the Virgo Supercluster, a swarm of over a thousand galaxies about 50 million light years distant.
To the east, Hercules is well up, with the nice globular cluster M-13 marked on your sky map and visible in binocs. The brightest star of the northern hemisphere, Vega (from Carl Sagan’s novel and movie, "Contact"), rises in the NE as twilight deepens. Twice as hot as our Sun, it appears blue-white, like most bright stars. At the opposite end of the parallelogram of Lyra is M-57, the Ring Nebula. In Floyd Griffith’s fine shot of the northern summer Milky Way on the following page, Vega is the bright star just to the top right of the plane of the Galaxy.
Northeast of Lyra is Cygnus, the Swan, flying down the Milky Way. Its bright star Deneb, at the top of the "northern cross" is one of the luminaries of the Galaxy, about 50,000 times more luminous than our Sun and around 3,000 light years distant. But amidst all the stars in Floyd’s majestic shot, it is hard to pick out, just to left of the plane of the Galaxy, and a little above (north) of Vega. Under dark skies as in Floyd’s fine photo, note the "Great Rift", a dark nebula in front of our solar system as we revolve around the core of the Milky Way in the Galactic Year of 250 million of our own years.
Altair is the third bright star of the summer triangle. It lies in Aquila the Eagle, and is much closer than Deneb; it lies within about 13 light years of our Sun. Here it is brightest star just to the upper left of the center of the photo, just to the left of the dark dust clouds along the Galactic Plane.
As we head south, Antares is well up at sunset in Scorpius. It appears reddish (its Greek name means rival of Ares or Mars to the Latins) because it is half as hot as our yellow Sun; it is bright because it is a bloated red supergiant, big enough to swallow up our solar system all the way out to Saturn’s orbit! Scorpius is the brightest constellation in the sky, with 13 stars brighter than the pole star Polaris! Note the fine naked eye clusters M-6 and M-7, just to the left of the Scorpion’s tail.
Just a little east of the Scorpion’s tail is the teapot shape of Sagittarius, which lies toward the center of the Milky Way. From a dark sky site, you can pick out the fine stellar nursery, M-8, the Lagoon Nebula (pink patch here), like a cloud of steam coming out of the teapot’s spout. This view of our home galaxy stretching overhead is for about midnight on July evenings, looking from the South to overhead. My favorite way of learning the many deep sky objects (open and globular clusters, bright nebulae like the Lagoon, and the many dark nebulae that make up the "Dark Constellations" of the Inca) is to use low power binoculars and lean back in a lawn chair (also an ideal way to observe meteor showers like August’s Perseids with just your naked eyes) and slowly sweep up and down the Galaxy, marking off the deep sky objects on your SkyMap as you spot them.
Note the back of the SkyMap has a fine selection of the best deep sky objects to spot with the naked eyes, binocs, and small scopes to help you find your way across the Galaxy this summer. Of course, you will need dark skies to see this kind of beauty, but many have plans for trips to parks and out west this summer, so be sure to plan for at least a few evenings under dark skies to appreciate our galaxy. Also, most new smartphones can get fine shots with timed exposures on a tripod like this one, using night camera or Starry Camera Pro programs. Try out yours dark evening.
