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06/14/2017 12:00 AMThe universe is almost 14 billion years old. If your only interaction with the sky has been to bask in the sun or hide from the rain, you're missing out on the joy and wonder of stargazing. This summer is the time to change that.
It helps to be a night owl or up before the rooster. In late June, the sun sets around 8:30 and rises around 5:30. By the start of September, those times have shifted about an hour—the sun sets around 7:30 and rises around 6:30—a little more reasonable, and there are two more hours of darkness to enjoy.
But even if you go to bed early, there's still some time in the evenings to become acquainted with the sky and all its admirable inhabitants—stars, planets, galaxies, comets, and more.
Stargazing can be a solo endeavor or a family-and-friends event. It can take just a few minutes, an hour, or all night. You can use only your eyes, or you can enhance the view with a telescope or binoculars. But first, it helps to know what's on display.
June
Some gorgeous celestial displays await. In June, Venus is visible in the east about two hours before sunrise, Jupiter appears between sunset and midnight, and Saturn hangs around all night, reaching its highest point in the sky around midnight.
Jupiter and Saturn are a treat to observe through a telescope. Even a small one shows Jupiter's four largest moons. You can see them change position from night to night as they orbit the planet. Saturn is almost unbelievably magnificent—people sometimes think a photo was inserted into the telescope the first time someone shows it to them.
On the last night in June, the first quarter moon will sit less than four degrees from Jupiter in the sky. For reference, a fist held up to the sky at arm's length measures about ten degrees.
July
Throughout July, Mercury will be visible at dusk in the western sky. Because the first planet orbits the sun so closely, it doesn't get nearly as much sky time as the rest of the planets. Although they never get very high in the sky, Mercury and Venus are fun to study. Since they're positioned between Earth and the sun, they have waxing and waning crescent phases like the moon. No other planets appear this way from Earth.
Venus gains an hour of visibility this month, appearing for three hours before sunrise, while Jupiter loses an hour, setting around 11 p.m. Saturn will still be visible all night and reach its highest point around midnight, just like in June.
The second week in July, during its window of visibility before sunrise, Venus will sit just seven degrees from the Pleiades. This star cluster is 444 light years away and easily seen with the naked eye. It has seven main stars called the seven sisters. Even more stars in this cluster are visible through binoculars or a telescope. When you gaze at the seven sisters, you're seeing their much younger selves, as they looked 444 years ago. That's how long it takes for their light to reach Earth. Stargazing is truly looking into the past.
On the night of July 6, Saturn will sit less than three degrees from the almost-full moon. This pair through a telescope will yield a sublime sight, revealing Saturn's rings and the moon's craters. You can get a decent telescope for anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. A four- to six-inch scope is considered medium-sized. The inch count refers to the diameter of the telescope's tube. One this size will let you see quite a bit of detail without costing too much or being too heavy to carry. Celestron and Orion make good ones.
The moon passes less than three degrees from Venus on the early morning of July 20, which is also the 48th anniversary of the moon landing. At dusk on July 24, Mercury will be just two degrees from the constellation Leo's bright star Regulus, and the moon will be less than five degrees from Mercury. Because the new moon will have occurred the day before, the young moon will be a gorgeous sliver of a crescent. Regulus is one of the sky's brightest stars and lives 79 light years from our sun.
July ends with a meteor shower—the Delta Aquarids peak the night of July 27 into the small hours of July 28, averaging about 20 meteors an hour. And on the night of July 28, the moon will be three degrees from Jupiter.
August
In August, Mercury slides back into the sun's glow, but Venus still rises about three hours before the sun. Jupiter and Saturn are still hanging around after dusk, but Jupiter sets before midnight while Saturn sets after.
On the night of Aug. 2, the moon and Saturn will be separated by just three degrees. On Aug. 19, the moon will be about five degrees from Venus in the morning. At dawn the next day, the moon will be five degrees from the Beehive Cluster, a star cluster like the Pleiades that is 577 light years from Earth. This time, the moon will be one day short of being new, so it'll be a breathtaking slivered crescent like it was last month when it was near Mercury and Regulus. At dusk on Aug. 25, the moon, Jupiter, and the bright star Spica will be in cahoots.
One of the year's best meteor showers, the Perseids, peaks Aug. 12 into the morning of Aug. 13. The meteors will appear to fly in from the northeastern part of the sky. Hope for clear skies, grab a blanket or lawn chair, and get comfortable, because this shower lasts all night and averages about a meteor a minute.
Total Solar Eclipse
On Aug. 21, the moon will completely cover the sun and a total solar eclipse will be visible to observers in a narrow band from Oregon to South Carolina. Some cities along the path include Salem, Oregon; Casper, Wyoming; Lincoln, Nebraska; Nashville, Tennessee; and Charleston, South Carolina.
Observers outside of this band will see a partial solar eclipse in the form of a crescent sun. From Connecticut, the partial eclipse will start at 1:25 p.m., reach maximum coverage—almost 70 percent—at 2:45, and end at 4 p.m.
At the eclipse's most straight-on vantage point, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, totality, when the sun is completely obscured, will last for two minutes and 40 seconds. Totality will be a bit briefer at other places along the track. This couple of minutes will be surreal. Totality is said to be like a short-lived sunset, complete with temperatures dropping and stars emerging.
Lunar eclipses, when Earth's shadow darkens some or all of the moon, are much more common. A total solar eclipse hasn't been visible from inside the 48 contiguous states since 1979. The next one happens not too long from now, on April 8, 2024.
If you can travel south, some towns and cities along the totality path are planning eclipse festivities. Check out www.eclipse2017.org for more information on where you can go and what's going on. NASA also weighs in at http://eclipse2017.nasa.gov.
Make sure you buy some approved eclipse glasses online for a few dollars. It's only safe to look at an eclipse without eye protection during totality—and you should, because you'll be able to see the sun's corona, or atmosphere! But once even a sliver of the sun emerges again, it's not safe to stare with bare eyes.
September and Beyond
The final weeks of summer continue to showcase beautiful celestial combinations. At dawn on Sept. 1, Venus will sit just one degree from the Beehive Cluster. From Sept. 2 to 20, Mercury and Mars will hover four degrees apart.
Yes, Mars is back—its orbit from our vantage point placed it opposite us, behind the sun, so we couldn't see it for months. Mars looks like a rusty red star to the naked eye, and its polar ice caps are sometimes visible through a telescope.
Our closest major galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is visible to the naked eye all night in autumn—from two and a half million light years away. From a very dark place without binoculars or a telescope, it will look like a faint, glowing smudge about the size of a full moon. Through binoculars, you can make out its two brightest satellite galaxies, and a telescope will show you even more, like the galaxy's globular clusters and its disc shape. It's best to mount binoculars on a tripod for steady views.
The last spectacle of the summer of 2017 occurs at dawn on Sept. 18, when Mercury, Mars, the moon, Regulus, and Venus are all aligned. Then, as autumn settles in, the Andromeda Galaxy comes out to play and shines across two and a half million years.
Melissa (Babcock) Johnson is an amateur astronomer and beginner astrophotographer who has been intrigued by starry skies since comets Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp passed overhead about 20 years ago. She wrote a monthly astronomy column for The Day newspaper in New London for eight years, and is pursuing an MFA in writing at Western Connecticut State University. She can be reached at bymeljohnson@gmail.com.