The Night Sky in June
First, let’s deal with the loss of an old friend. Venus no longer shines in the evening sky. Having graced the evening twilight for the first part of 2020, it has now returned to the morning sky. Early risers using binoculars will see it as a beautiful, slender crescent.
On the morning of June 19, a slender waning crescent Moon passes in front of Venus, hiding the planet from view; a lunar occultation. The best strategy for seeing this is to catch the Moon and Venus before sunrise when they are easy to see low above the eastnortheast horizon. Then stay with them until the occultation happens. Venus will be hidden a little after 8:30 BST (actual time varies slightly with location), the planet remaining behind the Moon for around 65 minutes, reappearing from behind the Moon’s dark southeast edge.
The June solstice occurs at precisely 22:43 BST on June 20, the instant when the centre of the Sun’s disc stops moving north against the background stars and begins to head south.
Late May through to early August it may be possible to see a beautiful phenomenon known as noctilucent (NLC) or “night-shining” clouds. These are ice clouds formed in the mesosphere around 50 miles up. Meteor dust provides the seeding agent around which tiny ice crystals form. The crystals reflect sunlight when the Sun is below the horizon and the clouds appear to shine against their twilight backdrop.
If present, NLCS can be seen low above the northwest horizon 90-120 minutes after sunset or low above the northeast horizon a similar time before sunrise. They often have a bluish hue and appear with intricate patterns of delicate strands.
Popping out when the Sun is furthest below the northern horizon, around 1am BST, reveals the stars of summer. The largest pattern on display is an asterism – formed of three bright stars from different constellations. The stars are Vega, Deneb and Altair, the primary stars of Lyra the Lyre, Cygnus the Swan and Aquila the Eagle. The asterism is known as the Summer Triangle, which points south towards Jupiter and Saturn. Currently they both reside in Sagittarius the Archer, a constellation containing many beautiful deep sky objects. From the UK, Sagittarius is unceremoniously truncated by the southern horizon, but an interesting asterism within it can still be seen. Known as the
Teapot, with a bit of imagination it really does look just like a teapot!
Using Jupiter and Saturn as a guide look to their right to locate the teapot’s shape. Once identified, binoculars are a useful tool for scanning the region where steam would be rising from the teapot’s spout (extreme right of the pattern). Here you’ll find wonderful deep sky objects such as M8 the Lagoon Nebula, and M20 the Trifid nebula.
Above Sagittarius is the diamond pattern of Scutum the Shield. This small constellation is rich in faint stars thanks to the Milky Way which flows through it. A bright strawberry-shaped region of Milky Way really stands out here if you have dark skies; this is the Scutum star-cloud.
Further left of the Jupiter-saturn pair sits the bright orange dot of Mars, a planet which is set to become very impressive. During June you’ll have to get up early to see it rising in the east as dawn takes hold. However, it will get much brighter over coming weeks, exceeding the brightness of Jupiter to become the second brightest planet in the sky after Venus.