Mars and Venus, Summer Stars, and the June Solstice!
The planets of war and love draw nearer each night, as the bright stars of Northern Hemisphere summer rise. And note the June solstice on the 21st.
What are some skywatching highlights in June 2023?
On June 1st and 2nd, Mars will be in the Beehive. The Red Planet passes through the Beehive Cluster, also known as Praesepe or M44. It’s a well-known open cluster of stars located around 600 light-years away in the constellation Cancer, the crab. The pairing will make for great viewing through binoculars or a small telescope, with a sparkle of faint stars surrounding the rust-colored disk of Mars.
You can watch Mars and Venus draw closer together throughout the month in the western sky following sunset. Nearby is brilliant, blue-white star Regulus – the heart of Leo, the lion. And on the 20th through the 22nd the crescent Moon passes through, making an especially lovely grouping at dusk on June 21st.
Turning to the morning sky, Saturn and Jupiter rise before dawn, with the Ringed Planet rising around midnight and leading brilliant Jupiter into the new day. Early risers will find them on the eastern side of the sky before sun-up all month long. And you’ll find Jupiter rising with the crescent Moon on June 14th.
Facing southward early on June evenings, you’ll notice two particularly bright stars high in the sky. They are Spica and Arcturus.
Blue-white Spica is the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, the maiden. It’s located about 250 light years away, and is actually two stars orbiting each other every 4 days at a distance far closer than Mercury orbits our Sun.
Orange giant Arcturus is the brightest star in Bootes, the herdsman. It’s the fourth brightest star in the sky. It’s much closer than Spica, at a distance of about 37 light years. It’s also quite an old star, compared to our Sun, at an age of 7-8 billion years.
Also on June evenings, you’ll notice the stars of the Summer Triangle – Vega, Deneb, and Altair – rising in the couple of hours after dark, and heralding the long, warm nights of Northern summer. The Triangle rises earlier each month as summer progresses.
June 21 is the Summer Solstice for the Northern Hemisphere, and Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. For the north, it’s the longest day of the year, as the Sun traces its highest, longest path across the sky. More hours of sunlight, in addition to the more direct angle of the Sun overhead, translate into warmer summertime temperatures for our planet’s summer hemisphere. The situation is reversed for those living south of the equator, where it’s the shortest day of the year, during the cool months of winter.
The June summer solstice has another interesting claim to fame. It helped the Ancient Greeks, 2,200 years ago, to understand the size of our planet with remarkable
He was also the first to calculate the tilt of Earth’s axis – which, after all, is what’s responsible for the solstices and for the seasons themselves.
Here are the phases of the Moon for June.
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