What's in the night sky in the week of 3 to 9 July, 2023 in our weekly stargazing guide. Venus, Mars and Regulus find themselves together in the night sky in this week’s stargazing guide.
Chris Bramley Hello and welcome to Star Diary, the podcast from the makers of BBC Sky at Night Magazine. You can subscribe to the print edition of the magazine by visiting www.skyatnightmagazine.com or digital edition by visiting on iTunes or Google Play.
Ezzy Pearson Greetings listeners and welcome to Star Diary, a weekly guide to the best things to see in the Northern hemisphere's night sky. As we're based here in the uk, all times are in BST. In this episode, we'll be covering the coming week from 3 to 9 of July. I'm Ezzy Pearson and I'm joined this week by Paul Money.
Paul Money Hello there, Ezzy.
Ezzy Hello Paul. Good to see you again. So can you tell me what we've got to look forward to in this month's night sky?
Paul Well, we're hanging on to those inferior planets. I always think inferior planets sounds sad, don't it, sort of thing.
EzzyYeah, yeah.
PaulCause you know the inferior. No, no, they're, they're quite superior to us really. They've got some fantastic features on them. Mars and Venus of course were talking about.
EzzyI, for years, thought they were interior planets because they're-
Paul That would be common sense, wouldn't it?
Ezzy -inside the Earth. Yeah. Yes. I mean, it's probably like if you look into the etymology of the words, it's related, but yeah.
PaulYes, of course. The inner planets are the inferior ones and the outer planets are the superior ones. Which makes you think, that's why Jupiter thinks it's the king. It's superior.
Ezzy I think that's more to do with the fact that it can eat all of the others and fit them inside, but...
Paul Oh, definitely. [laughs]. Oh dear. Well, we're sticking with the evening sky at the moment and yes, we're back with Venus and Mars. They, Mars now makes that almost perfect apex of a shallow triangle with Venus to the right, lower right. And then ironically, Regulus is almost level in Mars now. Regulus is in a bright background. We've got a bright sky. So the key here is use a pair of binoculars. Should be able to get them all in the field of view of a good 10 x 50 or 7 x 50 binocular. And you should be able to pick out this very faint star to the left of Mars. But Mars is to the upper left of Venus as well. This is on 3 July, around about 11 o'clock. If you leave it any later, they'll set. So we are getting to that period whereby we have this short period as the sky, the Sun sets, and then they set too quickly. So we don't have a lot of time sort of thing, about an hour and a half or such, which sounds a lot, but trust me, when you're looking towards the horizon, things seem to get to the horizon rather quicker than you expect.
Ezzy Yeah, it's that sort of, it's kind of like the same thing as the Moon illusion. So the Moon illusion, when the Moon is closer to the horizon, it looks bigger because you've got more of a flame... frame of reference. And I find it's a very similar thing with stuff that's when it's moving to the horizon. Because you can't tell how far something's moving across the top of the sky, but when you can see it like next to a tree or something, it suddenly seems much faster.
Paul It is. It's a matter of perspective, isn't it something? Mm-hmm. When you've got familiar objects, you know where they are, so you can see the movement quite quickly. But high up, well, you know, I'd challenge anybody with a naked eye to look and say, "can you see the movement of the Moon?" I usually wait at least an hour and then you think, oh yeah, I can see one or two stars, the positions are slightly different and the same as at the moment with Mars and Venus as well, but we haven't got many stars because of the twilight. Now, Mars will creep closer to regulars during the course of the week, but the big problem is of course, they're getting lower and the skies are quite light. So the light evening nights are really not helping them as such. But, this is why we've got Venus. Venus is acting as a guide. It's a brilliant planet. I mean, you can't mistake Venus. Although having said that, we're not far away from regularly used RAF base. So I have seen some bright lights going across and realise it isn't Venus it's actually one of the Typhoons taken off as such. So you know, so I do bear... if it's moving, it could be the International Space Station as well. . So that's the other thing to bear in mind, 'cause that'll be over in the west as well. Of course we don't do the timings for that simply because they can vary. We could say one night, the timing, and I've literally had it done to me. They, they raised the orbit the next night. So it totally changed the timings.
Ezzy And to be honest, these days there are so many satellites that people can see. Generally can't see them if you are visually observing, it's only if you're doing astrophotography that you need to worry about most satellites. But... there are websites that you can go online and find out where those are. Um, we have a guide if you want to try and find where the ISS is on any given night on the website as well. I'll put a link down to that in the show notes if you are interested in finding out more.
Paul And of course if it's passing over, give it a wave.
Ezzy Let them know someone's thinking of them.
Paul Yes, exactly.
EzzyQuite far away from home
Paul Actually. Some astronomers a couple of years ago actually, some group of American astronomers that I know actually did do an experiment with an astronaut on board. I think it might have been Don Pettit, but I can't remember exactly. And they deliberately aimed green lasers up. And they were able to see it from the ISS. This little group of people with these lasers pointing up. Of course we don't usually recommend green lasers 'cause they are very powerful.
Ezzy No,
Paul But they were doing this for a very specific experiment to see how visible they would be from the ISS.
Ezzy I'm going to put a disclaimer on that one. I am pretty sure pointing lasers up into the sky is illegal in the UK. Um, or at least it's illegal to point them at other... at vehicles, at planes and such. ISS is probably a little bit out of that jurisdiction. But yes, please don't point lasers into the sky, unless you have a lot of licenses saying that you can.
Paul Now, we often miss out the points of things like full Moon, unless there's an eclipse, but I particularly like this one where on 3 July, the full Moon actually lies down in Sagittarius. The only reason why I pointed out is that. When it's in Sagittarius, it's really low. But the ironic thing is we've got the light summer nights, so the full Moon doesn't have as big an impact on the night sky when it's low down in Sagittarius and it's in the summer, as it would do say a full Moon in the wintertime when it'll be high up in the dark sky.
So I, ironically, full Moon doesn't have that much of an effect for observers at this particular time of year simply because of its position and the fact that we have got the light nights as well. But it is full Moon on 3 July. So, uh, have a look at that 'cause people do like looking at the Moon, don't they?
They do like looking at full Moons. Um, they'll often talk about, you know, seeing whether they can see the difference. Again, it goes back to what we said earlier. I mean, physically seeing the difference. It's very difficult visually to actually see the difference from one- can you remember what the Moon size look like a month earlier?
EzzyNo
Paul I certainly can't. I don't think I know anybody who actually can.
Ezzy The Moon is always smaller than I think it is. Yes. Which is, is that that a thing again of having very little frame of reference when you're looking at things up in the night sky.
Paul I was always amazed when I was a kid to read that you could blot it out with your little fingernails. I held up my arm at arms length and put it up and arms- I was absolutely amazed. The Moon disappeared behind my finger. Yeah. You know, and you do think it's huge, but, it wasn't, and it isn't, I'm afraid.
Now we'll stick with the Moon because we have to jump a, a few days ahead because we haven't got a great deal happening this month. And so we, we jumped to 7 to 8 July, and we're actually again- now the Moon is passing Saturn. So on 7th , it's to the lower right of Saturn. Saturn is in Aquarius at the moment, and then on 8th, it's actually to the far left of Saturn, but it actually forms again, a shallow triangle with Neptune. But you've gotta bear in mind you won't see Neptune with the naked eye sky. So, you know, it's well worth having a lookout for the following the Moon. And the Moon does guide us to various other objects as well. We often use it to guide us to some of the more prominent double stars. Along the ecliptic itself.
On 9th, the Moon is then to the lower left of Neptune, but I remember you've gotta have a decent telescope to actually look at, or binoculars if you just want to see the dot of Neptune, but a telescope, if you want to look at the disc of Neptune itself to see any sort of features. But it does mean that, you know, we are still in the period of Noctilucent Clouds and we don't mention it a lot because we have mentioned it quite a lot over the last few weeks, but now we're into July.
We're in sort of the, the last full month. Of seeing Noctilucent Clouds. These are the night shining clouds over towards sort of- Look towards the northwest in the evening and the northeast in the morning sky, morning twilight. These are night shining clouds, so everything else should be dark and these should be shining.
At, at the moment, at the time of recording this, Ezzy, I haven't seen any! And I've got friends who are saying, "if you are hiding, stop hiding. Come out wherever you are." You know, we we're getting a bit frustrated, so we'll keep it- I have heard of one little display that was seen from Denmark.
And it was quite small a display, so it would've been a lot harder to see from the UK, but, uh, fingers crossed. Yeah. We, we could, but they, each season is different. I remember we've had seasons where it's been absolutely fantastic. We've had a lot of them. And then we've had seasons like this where we don't get, uh, many displays at all. So, uh, you know, there's something to do with the warming of the atmosphere that can have a dramatic effect on them.
Ezzy It is. At the time of recording, we're in a period of very nice weather. And because of the way that the climate works, uh, when it's very warm on the ground, that particular layer of the atmosphere gets very cold, which means you should technically have more Noctilucent Clouds, uh, because they're formed from ice crystals forming on various dust particles up there. But also, the Sun is very active at the moment. Lots of flares and things going on, and that means that a lot of that energy is getting pumped into those upper layers of the atmosphere, causing them to expand. And that will have an effect on whether or not these Noctilucent Clouds are going to be happening or not. And those are just the two things that I know about. It's a very complicated system with a dozen different things coming in. So. It’ll be interesting to watch as they progress. Yeah.
Paul Yeah. They are very unpredictable and at the moment the NASA AIM satellite the time recording was pretty much dead. And that had been the one that gave us the biggest know so advanced warning and could detect them.
Ezzy I did read, uh, a couple of minutes ago that there is another satellite that is possibly taking over that role. It’s – I’m sorry, the name is something like NOAA 21. I think that's it.
Paul Yeah. No, you're right. Cause I saw the same reports, so it's one of the NOAA satellites.
Ezzy Yeah. So we'll have to see how that goes ahead and whether we get any more information about that. About whether it's going to be monitoring for clouds from above and how those reports get disseminated.
PaulLook, keep looking out. You never know. I live in hope, Ezzy. I live in hope. So there we are. That's, uh, that week it is a bit of a shorter week sort of thing. Sometimes that's the way it happens, doesn't it? With the sky.
Ezzy Yes. Thank you very much, Paul, for taking us through all of those.
So in summary, on 3 July, Venus, Mars and Regulus will be forming a shallow triangle that will be visible best around about 11:00 PM but it will set shortly after, before midnight.
Also on 3 July, the full Moon will be low in the sky in the constellation of Sagittarius, which means it won't have as a dramatic effect on the night sky as it might do when it's slightly higher. Then on 7 July, the Moon will be directly below Saturn moving across the sky on 8th to form a shallow triangle with Neptune and the Moon. And always keep an eye out for night to shine in clouds or Noctilucent Clouds throughout the week as well.
And to keep up to date with stargazing highlights, be sure to subscribe to the Star Diary podcast and we hope to see you here next week. If you want to find out even more spectacular sites that will be grazing the Night's sky throughout the month, be sure to pick up a copy of BBC Sky at Night Magazine, where we have a 16 page pullout sky guide with a full overview of.
Everything worth looking up for, whether you like to look at the Moon, the planets, or the deep sky, whether you use binoculars, telescopes, or neither, our Sky Guide has got you covered with the detailed star charts to help you track your way across the night sky. From all of us here at BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
Goodbye.
Chris Bramley Thank you for listening to this episode of Star Diary, the podcast from the makers of BBC Sky at Night magazine. For more of our podcasts, visit our website at www.skyatnightmagazine.com or head to aCast, iTunes or Spotify.
