July 2024 Stargazing Guide
Greetings junior scientists, scientists and citizens this great big weird wild and wonderful world in which we live. As always I'm your humble science communicator the great Orbax, coming to you from the Department of Physics at the University of Guelh and I'd like to welcome you to our July 2024 Star Gazing Guide.
Now while we might think of July as peak summertime our daylight hours are in fact decreasing since the Summer Solstice last month. Let's make sure we take advantage of these beautiful summer nights to get some stargazing in. but what should we look for? This month our mornings are full of planets, we seek to spot a severely segmented snake, and we're on the hunt for a meteor or two near month's end. All this and more if we just take some time... to look up.
Well after a few lackluster months our neighbours within our solar system are back to visibility, albeit in the early morning hours. Mars, the Planet of Robots, will be visible from about 2:30 a.m. all month long rising in the East. Saturn will also be in the morning sky throughout the month with visibility increasing as the month goes on and the two will be joined by our other gas giant Jupiter, bright and bold and increasing invisibility as the days go on with best viewing at month's end. If you can manage to wake up before sunrise on July 1st you'll see Mars hang out with the waning crescent of the Moon and on the 30th and 31st you'll catch an interesting triangle between Mars, Jupiter and the waning crescent Moon.
Speaking of triangles don't forget to see if you can spot the Summer Triangle in our night sky. This asterism is comprised of three stars: Altair, Deneb and Vega. Not only does this asterism rise in the eastern sky throughout the night but it also rises daily all month long. Once you've spotted the Summer Triangle continue along that same latitude in the sky until you're facing South. It's there that you'll spot a constellation that we've never actually talked about in our Star Gazing Guides, Serpens. Serpens is one of the original 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy in the 2 century and remains one of the 88 recognized constellations today. You see Serpens is unique because it's split into two unconnected sections. Serpens Cauda, the serpent tail, and Serpens Kaput, the serpent head. These two sections are separated by a different constellation entirely Opiuchus, the serpent bearer. Now Serpens Cauda contains a deep sky object M16, the Eagle Nebula. Within the Eagle Nebula is a pretty famous star forming region which I'm sure you've seen from both the Hubble telescope and the JWST and it's known as The Pillars of Creation. While you won't be able to spot the Pillars without a super telescope of your own junior scientists at least you'll know where in the sky those images came from.
Our full Moon this month is on July 21st. Settlers commonly refer to the July full Moon as the Thunder Moon or the Buck Moon. This moon is referred to by the Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes region as the halfway summer Moon, as the days have already started getting shorter after the Summer Solstice back in June. The Cree of central Canada call the July full Moon Opaskowipisim ,the Feather Molting Moon, and the Mi'kmaw of the East coast also refer to this behaviour calling it Peskewiku’s the Birds Shedding Feathers Moon.
The Delta Aquariids meteor shower occurs annually from July 12th to August 23rd with a peak this year on July 28 into the 29th. Emanating from the constellation Aquarius, from which the shower gets its name, you should be able to see about 20 meteors per hour anywhere in the sky. Now, while close to the last quarter Moon, we won't actually see that Moon rise until about 1:00 a.m. leaving a good potential window of observation right in the pocket from about midnight to moonrise. Good luck junior scientists!
We live in an age where the answers to our questions seem to be at our fingertips yet while we find the answers to these questions many more questions remain. The universe and its ever growing expanse holds the answers to many of these questions and it's all just out... there waiting for you... if you just take some time...
to look up.
See you next month junior scientists and don't forget to have a science-tastic day!
Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist Dr Glynis Perrett for her help preparing our star gazing guide and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada