A celestial swan flies high in July sky
Six distinctive stars form a lopsided X pattern easily seen from suburbs
While our nights this time of the year may be short, they are filled with amazing celestial sights.
For those of us lucky to get out of the bright lights of the city into the countryside, the summer Milky Way arches overhead late at night, cutting right through the bright constellation Cygnus, the swan, otherwise known as the Northern Cross.
There are, however, six bright stars that form a distinctive lopsided X pattern that makes up Cygnus that is easily seen even from the suburbs. The brightest of the bunch is blue-white Deneb, marking the swan’s tail. Meanwhile, on the other side, orange-hued Alberio marks the bird’s head.
It’s definitely worth taking a gander at Alberio, which sits about 385 light years away from Earth – a dying star 700 times more luminous than our own sun. Binoculars easily reveal this elderly giant to be a magnificent double star. The fainter companion is a beautiful sapphireblue coloured gem that lies more than 630 billion kilometres away from neighbouring Alberio. That is more than 100 times the distance between the sun and Pluto.
Scan the sky around Cygnus with binoculars from the suburbs or with unaided eyes from the countryside, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by the stream of stars surrounding it. That’s because Cygnus appears to straddle the ghostly band of the Milky Way. Just left of the head of the cross marked by Deneb, a bright patch of diamonds known as M39 comes into view. Located 800 light years away, this cluster contains 30 young stars that appear to take up half the size of the full moon in the sky.
Planet parade: Evenings are also filled with cosmic wonders much closer to home — in our solar system. The ringed planet Saturn starts July low in the southern latenight sky but will appear to sink toward the horizon in the southwest as the summer weeks go by.
You can track down Saturn in the constellation Virgo, about 10 degrees to the left of the bright blue star Spica. That separation is about equal to the width of your fist at arms length.
Train even the smallest of backyard telescopes on Saturn and you can check our those amazing rings and its largest moon, Titan.
Meanwhile, Venus continues to dominate the low western sky after sunset. In fact, in the first half of the month, the second planet from the sun reaches its peak bright- ness, only outshone by the moon and sun.
And speaking of the moon, it will be making a very close pass by Venus on July 18 — when the two will be separated by less than two degrees — about the same width as your thumb at arm’s length.
Get your views of Venus soon because by the end of the month it will be lost in the glare of the sunset and will only return in the morning skies later in August.
And Jupiter, which appeared to be best buddies with Venus the last few weeks, will also follow Venus’s lead and take its last bows as it heads toward the horizon, too, by early August.
The moon will be making a very close pass by Venus on July 18.