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Summer is officially, astronomically here. And for folks in the Northern Hemisphere, that means it’s the perfect time to head outside and see what’s happening in the sky. Today we’ll give you a good list of things to keep an eye out for, with or without a telescope.
Show Notes | Transcript
Show Notes
Meteorological Versus Astronomical Seasons (NCEI)
The Magellanic Clouds, our galactic neighbors (EarthSky)
See rare alignment of 5 planets and moon in stunning photo (Space.com)
Dark Adaptation of the Human Eye and the Value of Red Flashlights (NPS)
The phases of planets (NCCR – PlanetS)
What are Dobsonian Telescopes? (Space.com)
Mercury after sunset: Greatest elongation is August 27 (EarthSky)
Inferior Conjunction (Swinburne University)
International Space Station (NASA)
Spot the Station (NASA)
Tianhe, the core of the Chinese Space Station (The Planetary Society)
X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (U.S. Air Force)
Delta Aquariid meteor shower: All you need to know in 2022 (EarthSky)
‘Unsustainable’: how satellite swarms pose a rising threat to astronomy (Nature)
Perseids Meteor Shower 2022 (Time and Date)
Sturgeon Moon Is the Full Moon in August (Time and Date)
Supermoon / Super Moon – Why and When? (Time and Date)
Aurora (Swinburne University)
Huge Solar Eruption With Unknown Origin Could Be Flying Towards Earth (Newsweek)
NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA)
Solar Cycle 25 Is Here. NASA, NOAA Scientists Explain What That Means (NASA)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Summer Triangle: Signpost of the season (EarthSky)
The deep sky (Astronomy)
Open cluster (ESA Hubble)
What is a globular cluster? (EarthSky)
What Is a Nebula? (NASA)
Planetary Nebula (ESA Hubble)
Explore – The Night Sky | Hubble’s Messier Catalog (NASA)
The Beehive Cluster: A swarm of 1,000 stars (EarthSky)
Moon Phases 2022 – Lunar Calendar (Time and Date)
Transcript
(This is an automatically generated transcript)
Fraser Cain [00:01:49] Astronomy Cast episode 648 Summer observing. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, a weekly fact based journey through the cosmos. We help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I’m Fraser Cain and the publisher of Universe Today, but a space astronomy journalist for over 20 years. With me, as always, is Doctor Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of Cosmic Quest. Hey. What? How you doing?
Pamela Gay [00:02:14] I am doing well. I think it feels dangerous to say that phrase right now. Yeah. But, I’m currently contemplating. Is there going to be camping this summer? Now you go look at the awesome things we’re going to discuss in this episode, because prepping for this episode made me want to go camping.
Fraser Cain [00:02:35] Yes. Yeah, I have definitely been getting the itch to get out and do some hiking and some and some camping. It’s a bunch of mountains I want to climb. The snow pack has been just ludicrous though, so it’s possible that we can’t do any high altitude hiking this summer because there’s still just too much snow up on the mountain. People are still skiing in June and I know right now it’s crazy. So yeah.
Pamela Gay [00:02:58] That that’s the way it used to be when we were kids, you know?
Fraser Cain [00:03:02] Well, maybe not our mountains pretty can get a lot of snow, but, but not all the way through till the summer. Like, this is ludicrous. Yeah. Summer is officially astronomically here. And for the folks in the northern hemisphere, that means it’s a perfect time to head outside and see what’s happening in the sky. Today, we’ll give you a good list of things to keep an eye out for, with or without a telescope. All right, people in the Southern Hemisphere, do you notice I made that disclaimer? We understand that you exist. We appreciate you, but it’s going to be cold for you. And so you may want to stay inside.
Pamela Gay [00:03:39] Or go on vacation up here.
Fraser Cain [00:03:40] Or go on vacation to the north. Yeah. And maybe see a galaxy there. Neat. That was a subtle dig at the fact we have no galaxies in the sky. So, but anyway, but they have the large, large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and that’s. They are amazing. So. So they make up for it. All right, Pamela, let’s talk about this. So, man, I do. We do this every year, almost. We often do this. We’ll. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we will talk about some interesting things to see in the, in the sky over the summer. So, so let’s talk about some things that are transitory first and then we’ll talk about some old, old mainstays. And I think the thing that we should talk about that is that is not common is the rare alignment of the planets in the morning sky.
Pamela Gay [00:04:29] Which is happening right now, right now. And and it’s amazing because they even ordered themselves in order. So like come the horizon up, right, right before sunrise, look to to the east and it goes Mercury. Venus. We’re standing on the Earth. Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:04:49] Down to your feet for a second, then backlight.
Pamela Gay [00:04:51] Mars. Jupiter. It’s it’s it’s amazing. They are all there. Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:04:55] Anyway, all in a row in order. Yeah, yeah. And this is rare. Like, this isn’t going to happen again for several decades. And so if, if you see a bunch of planets in the sky and you aren’t sure which ones are which, now you can go outside and they’re all in a row. And so you can you can get to know them for how they look. Because like, you know, when you see Jupiter, it’s obviously different and bright and Venus is ludicrously bright, but sometimes it’s hard, you know, like, is that like, is that Saturn or is that a star.
Pamela Gay [00:05:26] Right.
Fraser Cain [00:05:27] And now you can tell and learn them. Now can you see Mercury from your house.
Pamela Gay [00:05:33] If I go on the roof. Otherwise it’s lost to the trees. But we luckily have a hatch inside of our house to get onto the roof. And I may have done that a few times, mostly to find comets, because I have to admit, it scares the bejesus out of me to go onto the roof. But a comet can be worth it.
Fraser Cain [00:05:52] Yes. Yeah, worth the risk. So then it’s DNA. I can’t see mercury. I’ve got. I’ve got mountains to the west of me and mountains to the east of me. And so there’s. I would have to go out to the West coast and then look, I guess in the, you know, when it’s in the, in the western sky.
Pamela Gay [00:06:12] Yeah. When it’s American.
Fraser Cain [00:06:13] Snapshots. Yeah. Yeah. Because then the only, you know, there’s nothing between me and Japan at that point, but from, from the east, from the, the east coast of the island where I live. Yeah. It’s I’ve got the mountain on one side and then I’ve got the, the coastal mountain range on the other side. And so it’s really hard to see that low down on the horizon. There’s what you need. So then like what’s the best way to take advantage of seeing all of these planets one after the other?
Pamela Gay [00:06:41] Sadly, the best way to. Do it is to switch yourself over to being on a night schedule or get up at midnight. Let yourself get thoroughly dark, adapted, and set up a telescope at least a couple of inches in size, preferably more like a four inch. And just check them out one at a time and notice things like the inner planets are crescents, the outer planets aren’t necessarily full desks, and what we’re seeing is the planets actually have phases that we can see as we look at them traveling around the sun.
Fraser Cain [00:07:21] Now Mars is entering its culture period, isn’t it? Yes, we’re entering one of the Mars windows. And so that’s a good, really good time to to look at Mars. And and then of course, Saturn and Jupiter again look amazing in small telescopes. So yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you can point them out with your eyes and go, yep, I’m looking at Mars. That’s amazing. But to really see the polar ice caps, to see the rings of Saturn, to see the bands across the planet on Jupiter, to see the moons, you really want that, that small telescope and don’t and don’t get fancy about it. Like don’t get sucked in to the latest $4,000 cyber telescope or the Goto telescope just to straight up like a four inch dobsonian six inch dobsonian.
Pamela Gay [00:08:08] With a four inch DOB. You want a small table so that you’re not, like, awkwardly lying on the ground. Yeah, a four inch a four inch DOB on a little tiny folding table will make you happy.
Fraser Cain [00:08:20] Yeah, and a six inch DOB will do everything you want.
Pamela Gay [00:08:23] Yeah, exactly. And what’s what’s cool about this is you look now and then over time, you can see the planets diverge in their locations across the sky. And if you keep watching the different worlds, you’ll see the phases of Venus change. You’ll see Mars actually appear a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger as it gets closer and closer to being straight overhead at midnight. And it’s, it’s it’s seeing things change that it really becomes possible to fall in love with the mechanics of our solar system, as well as just the stunning views.
Fraser Cain [00:09:03] Yeah. All right. I don’t think there’s any other big events, many, any like nonstandard weird events that are happening over the course of the summer. Can you think of anything else?
Pamela Gay [00:09:14] So, so Mercury is doing its best to try and get itself noticed. So on August 27th, it is going to be at its greatest elongation east. This means it will be as far as it gets away from the sun in the pre sunrise sky. And July 16th, which is going to be the Saturday after our last episode of the season pretty much. I it is going to be directly behind the sun from us, which means we absolutely cannot see it. And it’s just cool to watch it as it comes out from behind the sun, and it goes from being as full as it gets, snuggled as close to the sun as it gets, to becoming more and more crescent as it goes towards those elongation phases, and then comes around so that we can no longer see it lit up when it’s at the inferior conjunction.
Fraser Cain [00:10:14] So yeah.
Pamela Gay [00:10:15] Watch it from late July through to September, and you’ll be able to see Mercury go through all of its phases.
Fraser Cain [00:10:24] So summertime for me often means that it’s International Space Station observing season.
Pamela Gay [00:10:30] Yes.
Fraser Cain [00:10:32] And so what’s sort of because I’m so far north during the summertime, the the sunlight gets above the eye, gets the horizon, and can hit the International Space Station for its entire journey across the sky. You know, if it if it starts its journey just after twilight. And you’ll often sometimes get two passes and sometimes even three passes or that third pass. Now you’re like 90 minutes later, then three hours later. And so you don’t get a full, complete pass. But but we can get three passes of the International Space Station visible from, from where I am. And it’s just great. I mean, you know, you go to a place like Heavens Above or there’s other places that will let you estimate the time when the space station is going to head right over head, and then you head outside, you know, you tell you having your friends over for some cocktails you like, hey, everybody, let’s go outside for a second and your good side. And then boom, there’s the space station flying overhead. It’s warm outside. You’re pointing in the sky. And, you know, people are learning their rhythms to this magic trick that you’ve just done to show them the International Space Station. I love doing that. And in fact, now with the Chinese station, with Tim, with the Tim win. You know, there are other fainter objects that you can also find as well. Same thing. User site like heavens above. You can find the Hubble Space Telescope when it’s flying above.
Pamela Gay [00:12:00] Find the X-37b. That one, yes, just means no end.
Fraser Cain [00:12:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. The secret military space shuttle. You can. You can find it. And then, of course, there will be Starlink launches and.
Pamela Gay [00:12:18] Yes. And the trains associated with that. Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:12:22] Yeah, you can watch the train as the satellites are moving past and and it is quite, you know, very noticeable train of dots that you can only see them for a day or so and then they’re to high altitude and then they’re invisible again. So highly recommend that you do that. So what what about what about you.
Pamela Gay [00:12:40] Well I’m trying to figure out. Just go look up before the sky is swarming more than it is. And enjoy the satellites that we have now, before you become so overwhelmed with them later that you want to curse at them.
Fraser Cain [00:12:55] Yeah, we’re still in the in. The satellites are cool phase, aren’t we?
Pamela Gay [00:12:59] Yeah. And and right now we have July 18th through August 21st is going to be this wide swath of time when you can see the Delta aquarid meteors and and this large swath of time is because it’s from a comet that that orbits every 5.3 years and its orbit is is moving enough that there’s a large area of sky that it has left junk in over time. So with that particular, meteor shower, we can see about 20 meteors an hour, and sometimes you can see about 20 satellites an hour. And it’s super weird to be out there going. Is that a me? No, that’s a satellite. Is that a no? That’s a satellite. And and so go out and just see what there is to see and know that it’s going to get harder and harder to spot the meteors in the swarming satellites over time.
Fraser Cain [00:14:03] Maybe. Maybe unless they I mean, it’s going to be definitely if you’re running a big observatory. But so far all of the starlink’s are they turn invisible to the unaided eye, even with perfectly dark skies. Yeah, the next generation, the Starlink 2.0 is, which is going to be a lot bigger. We’ll see. And it’s not just.
Pamela Gay [00:14:21] The starlink’s, it’s it’s there’s so many different communications satellites, weather satellites, Earth imaging satellites and and with thousands of satellites going up per year, even if the majority of those are Starlink, there’s still going to be a whole bunch of other stuff going up. Now, luckily, a lot of these meteors can be seen in the middle of the night and and with with the Delta Aquarius, we get a certain amount of new moon privilege with that new moon on July 28th, so that it’s not wiping out the faintest meteors. Unfortunately, the Perseids this year.
Fraser Cain [00:15:02] Which.
Pamela Gay [00:15:04] Are normally such an amazing go out, watch them after midnight when most of the satellites can’t be seen. Kind of meteor shower. They kind of have well, the sturgeon moon.
Fraser Cain [00:15:20] Right? Yeah. They’re kind of a full moon. They’re one day after the full moon. And so you’re going to have that that moon glaring all night, which. Like you think. It’s not going to be that bad, but it’s that bad when you go out there and there’s the full moon and you’re trying to see meteors, and you would have seen a pile of them, but all you see is just the full moon. And it kind of sucks. Like normally like if it’s like a three quarter moon, quarter moon, half moon.
Pamela Gay [00:15:49] Good deal.
Fraser Cain [00:15:50] But yeah.
Pamela Gay [00:15:52] Full moon.
Fraser Cain [00:15:54] Yeah. Skip it.
Pamela Gay [00:15:55] Not only is it a full moon it’s our moon changes distance ever so slightly throughout its orbit. So there are times when the full moon is bigger is brighter but a couple of percent. It’s, it’s enough that you can see it in photographs. It’s not enough that you can get. You should get super excited about a supermoon. But of course, the August 11th full moon that is interrupting the Perseids is one of those bigger and brighter.
Fraser Cain [00:16:26] Yeah. Like they they increase brightness by about like 30%. So so it is noticeable and it just makes it that much worse. So yeah I like you because like normally we always recommend like okay, it’s the meteor shower. Gather your friends together. Do some planning to find out where your nice dark sky location is. Takes a bug spray. Take some chairs. Take some hot chocolate. Make an adventure out of it and you will have a story to tell your family. For years to come. And this year just don’t know. Skip it. Yeah.
Pamela Gay [00:17:02] So I I’m probably going to try and go camping that week between New Moon and Full Moon, when we’ll be getting the very first few purses. And we’ll still be getting the Delta Aquarius. But yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s give.
Fraser Cain [00:17:21] It let’s give it like, by all means. If you got like a nice place, you can stand outside and have a good view to the sky. You’ve got relatively dark skies and you’re okay to put up with the moon. Then give it a shot and you’ll see some. But yeah, it’s not, it’s not ideal. So I’ve got something interesting that I want people to keep an eye out for. And that is auroras. The sun is moving towards its solar maximum. And in fact, just the day that we’re recording or a day before this, a giant coronal mass ejection blasted directly at the Earth, increased auroral activities. People have reported seeing auroras. So you don’t know when and where it’s going to happen. But as long as you just keep track of the space weather, there must be an occasional aurora event over this this summer. And it’s, you know, they happen. They can happen any time of year. And they’re better in the winter because winter is longer. But still, you’ve got a shot to see them in the summertime. And don’t worry if you’re too far south, like, you know, the the sun is got so much activity. These solar storms can be so strong that you can see, I would say, auroras down to Northern California. South Dakota.
Pamela Gay [00:18:38] The best aurora I ever saw were in August in New Hampshire during the last solar maximum.
Fraser Cain [00:18:46] Yeah yeah, yeah. So take a like take a line, run it through the United States through like through the middle of the United States. And if you’re north of that line, I would say give it a shot. When you see like a strong aurora alert, go outside and you know, preplan in advance, a place you can go that’s to the north of where you are, that has a nice view to the horizon. Like if you could go to a lake or something, be able to see to the north.
Pamela Gay [00:19:13] So you stay on the southern edge of the lake, look to the north from the beach.
Fraser Cain [00:19:18] And even for the the folks in the southern hemisphere, you can see auroras too. So now it’s just everything’s the opposite. So yeah, look to the, you know, go to a place to.
Pamela Gay [00:19:27] Stay on the.
Fraser Cain [00:19:28] South.
Pamela Gay [00:19:28] Side.
Fraser Cain [00:19:29] Yeah. Look to the south and be able to look to the south and, and hopefully you’ll be able to see something. So and I can’t tell you when you have to keep track of the space weather, NOAA, NOAA. But if you do search for like space weather on Google, you can find what the current space weather activities are. There’s apps. I apologize, I don’t have an app that I like the best right now.
Pamela Gay [00:19:50] I don’t either.
Fraser Cain [00:19:51] Ferrari. I find they’re they’re kind of ad filled and and you can’t rely on them. So I tend to just go to, to NOAA’s website and search from there. So NOAA do a search for that space weather. You should be able to find out when events are happening. And then, you know, I always say you miss 100% of the auroras that you don’t try to see.
Pamela Gay [00:20:14] Yeah, yeah. You never know just when you’re going to get lucky. And even though the forecast says you have to be far more north, they’ll show up in Maryland. They like the.
Fraser Cain [00:20:25] Track. Exactly. All right. So let’s talk about the things to observe. Serve in the summer sky that are annual crowd pleasers, just not during the full moon.
Pamela Gay [00:20:36] So I think that summer triangle with the great Milky Way sprawling across it is Cygnus. The Swan flies along. It’s it’s a wonderful time of year to just get to know the nebulae, the star forming regions, open clusters. I I’m a December kind of person, but the summer sky is is when you get to see our own galaxy. It’s in the winter that you can start to escape to the rest of the universe. But the summer belongs to the disc. It belongs to. You know, all that dust and gas that is so annoying to extragalactic astronomers and those of us interested in the stuff in the outer halo. But if you want to see stars forming and everything else, now’s the time to look.
Fraser Cain [00:21:32] And if you’ve still got that Dobsonian telescope that you bought for the planets, then you can definitely put it to work. If you see some fuzzy bit in the sky, point the telescope, see what you can see. You can get a book and learn some of your constellations. You can see where some of the open clusters are, where some of the globular clusters are. There’s a lot to see in the sky Nebula, planetary nebula, all kinds of good stuff. But it’s also great to use a pair of binoculars, and that’s all the time. What binoculars do you recommend for this kind of thing?
Pamela Gay [00:22:06] I would say nothing less powerful than ten by 50s. And and that is a good size for small hands. It gives you a large swath of the sky that you can see. It’s a great beginning pair and that that is saying it’s going to magnify it by a factor of ten. And you have this 50 millimeter aperture of light that’s letting the light in. And and that combination lets you start to see, all of the Messier objects as at least being fuzzy points on the sky when you’re in a dark place. It won’t work if you’re not in a dark place, but for a dark place that gets you. The entire Messier catalog is a little fuzzy spots.
Fraser Cain [00:22:54] Some better than others. I mean, summer, yeah. Really impressive in a pair of binoculars.
Pamela Gay [00:22:59] Yes. One of my favorite objects for this time of year. Late at night, going into the early morning. And it will get earlier and earlier as the summer progresses. There is the double cluster, which is off the constellation Cassiopeia. It is, two different clusters that are side by side and form a double puff ball. And it looks kind of like you might imagine one of those cartoon beehives looking, it’s it’s just cool. There’s so many different things to explore. And for me, I think my favorite memories are before I actually knew how to consistently find stuff from when I would just go outside with binoculars in the summer, and so much bug spray, so much bug spray and just lay out in a hammock or on a sleeping bag on asphalt, not directly on the grass because ticks people there are problem. And just look around and then try and figure out what it was I just found. So doing things backwards, exploring, seeing what’s cool, and then figuring out what it was I had found.
Fraser Cain [00:24:14] Yeah, I had the exact same experience where I would you take binoculars or my small telescope? I would see something in the sky that looked like a fuzzy bit, and sometimes you would you would see it out of your peripheral vision, and then you look, you figure out exactly where it was, and then you would point your telescope at that fuzzy bit. And what do you know? It’s something it’s an open cluster. It’s a galaxy. It’s kind of a great way to go about, you know, if it’s if there’s a fuzzy bit in the sky, it’s a thing. I’ve got a pair of the, the 15 by 70 fives from Celestron and they’re pretty beefy. But we use them all the time both for the night sky but also for like, birds. Wildlife here. They’re great. So I do recommend them, but.
Pamela Gay [00:25:00] Anything bigger than that, you have to have a tripod.
Fraser Cain [00:25:04] Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can buy like a 25 by 100, but yeah, I have.
Pamela Gay [00:25:09] The pictures as well.
Fraser Cain [00:25:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they’re not the one you grab because they’re just so tough. Yeah. Anything else that you recommend people take a look at this summer.
Pamela Gay [00:25:19] So we haven’t brought up Saturn. And Saturn’s actually going to be at opposition on August 14th. And. What is really cool is to make a point of looking at Saturn, every opposition and seeing how over time we can watch the rings change their tilt. So every year, opposition is going to appear a slightly different point in the year, and every year those rings are going to appear slightly different as it orbits, and we get to align with it at a different point in its orbit. And. With opposition at August 14th. That means it will be straight overhead that. But we’ll get to enjoy it for pretty much the entire summer. So if you’ve never seen Saturn through a telescope, it is one of those objects that you look at. And most people’s initial reaction is, is that real?
Fraser Cain [00:26:19] That can’t be real.
Pamela Gay [00:26:20] Yeah, yeah. And it’s totally real. It is.
Fraser Cain [00:26:23] Yeah.
Pamela Gay [00:26:24] Totally real.
Fraser Cain [00:26:26] So great. All right. One. Don’t forget about the moon. Moons. Moons can do the regular moon things. So if you do it again or outside, definitely check out the moon and take note of how it changes over the month. Take a look at it when you see that first crescent, and then take a look when it’s a nice. Like when you see half of the moon, and then see how terrible it looks when it’s a full moon.
Pamela Gay [00:26:50] So June 28th is that new moon. And then sadly, August 11th, destroying the Perseids. Is that full moon? Go out and watch it down.
Fraser Cain [00:27:02] So good. All right. Well, thank you, Pamela. I hope everyone takes some of our advice and let us know what you saw this summer.
Pamela Gay [00:27:09] Sounds awesome. Fraser. Thank you. And and thank you to all the people out there in our audience who make this show possible with your generous contributions through our Patreon. We know that in these times of rising everything prices, it’s hard to find the extra to give. And to those of you who can. Thank you. This week I would like to thank Minsky, Peter, John Drake, Dean Shawn, Freema Blitzer, the Cat, Tim Gerrish, John, USAF Corning Dump truck, Roland Vollmer, Dom Benjamin Davies, Arctic fox, Claudia mastroianni, Brian. Kilby, Natalia Lu Zealand, Jordan Turner, Lee ha, born Jason, caduceus, Olivia, Brianne. Zang, Ron. Thorson, Papa 1062 Robert Hundley, Kim. Baron. Vitale, Paul. Esposito, Arthur. Latz. Hall, Frank. Stewart, Ganesh. Swaminathan, Bob. Zat, ski the air, Major Ruben McCarthy, time Lord, erode, Jeff McDonald and Iggy Hammock. Thank you all so much. You make what we do possible.
Fraser Cain [00:28:23] Thank you everyone, and we’ll see you next week.
Pamela Gay [00:28:25] Bye. Astronomy cast is a joint product of Universe Today and the Planetary Science Institute. Astronomy cast is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. So love it, share it, and remix it, but please credit it to our hosts, Fraser Cain and Doctor Pamela Gay. You can get more information on today’s show topic on our website. Astronomy. Cars.com. This episode was brought to you thanks to our generous patrons on Patreon. If you want to help keep the show going, please consider joining our community at Patreon.com Slash Astronomy Cast. Not only do you help us pay our producers a fair wage, you will also get special access to content right in your inbox and invites to online events. We are so grateful to all of you who have joined our Patreon community already. Anyways, keep looking up. This has been Astronomy Cast.