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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
The W of Cassiopeia hangs in the sky above Yosemite Valley in this gorgeous moonlit photo. Eta Cassiopeiae is indicated with an arrow. Credit: Kunal Mehta (Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Cassiopeia the Queen swings in a wide circle around the North Celestial Pole, visible much of (if not all of) the night for most northern observers.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
The National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory has been under construction atop Cerro Pachón in Chile since 2015. Housing an 8.4-meter telescope coupled with a 3,200-megapixel camera, the now-completed facility will soon undertake the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a 10-year survey promising unprecedented insight into the cosmos.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, June 20The summer solstice occurs at this evening at 10:42 P.M. EDT. For those in the Northern Hemisphere, this marks the official beginning of the summer season. (For those south of the equator, of course, this is the winter solstice and marks the official beginning of winter.) On this date, the Sun appears to sit directly above Earth’s Tropic of Cancer, which marks 23.5° latitude north.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Noctilucent clouds appear to glow in the nighttime sky long after the Sun has set. Credit: pompiainen (Flickr, CC BY 2.0) The summer solstice occurs at 10:42 P.M. EDT, marking the official beginning of summer for those in the Northern Hemisphere. On this date, the Sun is located directly above the Tropic of Cancer at 23.5° north, taking its most northerly path through the sky. It is also the longest day of the year north of the Tropic of Cancer.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Saturn and Neptune rise together just before 1:30 A.M. local daylight time, with the waning Moon nearby. You can catch them in the few hours before local sunrise — the pair of planets is 23° high in the east two hours before dawn, with the Moon close by to their left. The crescent Moon is now just over 40 percent lit. First-magnitude Saturn is visible to the naked eye, but 8th-magnitude Neptune is not.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Asteroid 4 Vesta is stationary at 3 P.M. EDT. Now located in the constellation Virgo, Vesta is mid-6th-magnitude — easy to find in just a few minutes from any location using binoculars or a small telescope. Step outside this evening an hour or two after sunset to find the large constellation Virgo hovering above the southwestern horizon. The Maiden’s brightest star is magnitude 1.0 Spica, easy to pick out some 30° above the horizon.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Night owls looking southeast late this evening should easily be able to find the Teapot of Sagittarius, a large asterism that lies close to the plane of the Milky Way. The top of the Teapot’s lid is marked by magnitude 2.8 Lambda (λ) Sagittarii, and just 2.5° northeast of this star is tonight’s target: globular cluster M22. Shining at magnitude 5.1, M22 is one of the brightest globulars in our sky.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
Mars will pass 0.8° north of Regulus at midnight EDT, and both are visible for several hours after sunset for evening observers to enjoy. In the post-sunset sky, look west to find the two standing close together, with Mars just to the upper right of Regulus. Both star and planet are the same magnitude (1.4) but their colors will give them away. Regulus is a hot, blue-white star whose temperature reaches some 15,400 kelvins, more than twice our Sun’s surface temperature of nearly 5,800 kelvins.
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1 week ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
This one-hour exposure of the Whirlpool Galaxy and its small companion was taken with a TSRCM 8-inch Ritchey-Chrétien telescope and ToupTek IMX571 sensor. Credit: [-ChristiaN-] (Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Two hours after sunset, the sky is dark and the constellation Canes Venatici is high in the west, nestled beneath the curve of Ursa Major’s long tail, which also creates the handle of the Big Dipper asterism.
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2 weeks ago | 
astronomy.com | Alison Klesman
The Moon doesn’t rise until late tonight, leaving a dark window after sunset to explore the sky. Back in Leo in the west this evening, you might try your luck with Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, also known as Schwassmann-Wachmann 1. Now around 13th magnitude, the comet is sliding through southwestern Leo. Today, Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 is roughly 2° from magnitude 3.5 Subra (Omicron [ο] Leonis), often depicted as Leo’s front foot.
