Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to take a closer look at the constellations that we’re going to see over the course of the month. I have already taken a look at the planets and the constellations in June, back in May we looked ahead to this month and the title of the piece was the Planets and the Constellations in June, but I did end up looking more so at the planets, the not as much on the constellations. Today, I’m going to really focus on just the constellations.

We’re going to start as we normally do, with sunset in a city sky. As soon as the stars emerge, there’s already plenty of famous constellations up and visible. Leo is up just above the sunset, Arcturus is high almost due south, meaning the diamond shape above it is the rest of Boötes. Boötes can be tricky to pronounce at first, I certainly pronounced it to rhyme with the English word “boots”, but the two vowels are supposed to be seperate, “boo-ootes”, which is a little tricky to say. Down below Arcturus is Spica, so the stars around it must be the rest of Virgo. Lower to the south-east Scorpius is clearly visible, above the horizon while the Sun is setting at a little after 11 o’clock, around 11:15. Looking at the sky on the 10th puts the Moon right next to Antares in Scorpius. A little further east and higher is the Summer Triangle, already above the horizon by the time the sky is getting dark. Of course the asterism that is the Summer Triangle is composed of many smaller constellations. Starting with Deneb in the north east corner, the arms of Cygnus should be visible extending from it quite early. Vega in Lyra is really bright and visible in the north west corner, but we can’t really see the rest of Lyra very clearly. Down at the southern corner we have Altair in Aquila. We’re starting to see some of the other stars in Aquila, but Altair is still the clearest, the only one that’s very easy to see while the Sun is still setting, and the Sun is very much still setting at around 11 in early June. Taking a look towards the north, of course the constellations there are always the same, but they do change positions. By now the Plough or the Big Dipper is very high, just after moving past the zenith and Cassiopeia is much lower, almost right above the northern horizon.

We’re going to have to move later to see more of the stars, of course, so we’ll move forward until the sky is as dark as we’re going to get here in Ireland at this time of the year. We’re pretty close to the Full Moon and looking at the sky at 12 o’clock, the Moon is over the south. Of course it’s not really physical midnight and the Moon isn’t really full, though it is close. If we take a look around the sky here, we can see that Leo’s definitely setting, Spica is still there, but we’re starting to see more of other constellations rising in the east. Very difficult to see is Libra, but the stars between Virgo and Scorpius must be Libra, even if they’re hard to spot. Stretching up after Scorpius are parts of Ophiuchus, which is the 13th sign of the zodiac. It lies just in between Scorpius and Sagittarius, or at least starts there but then extends up much higher into the sky. It can be tough to pick out the constellations with no help, but if we had the lines of the constellations, we’d start to see a few more of the constellations a little bit more clearly. Of course, some of them still look pretty abstract, Virgo, I always say, looks pretty abstract, and Libra as well. Ophiuchus also looks quite strange, but Ophiuchus is the serpent bearer, with the serpent that he’s carrying. Extending to the east over sagittarius is the tail of the serpent, Serpens Cauda, and extending out over Scorpius and Libra is the head of the serpent, Serpens Caput.

Also up nice and high is Corona Borealis. Just a little bit higher than Arcturus, it’s in between Böötes and Hercules. Of course, Hercules itself is pretty faint, but bright Vega is nearby as well. On a line in between Vega and Arcturus is the constellation of Corona Borealis. That is where we’re going to see, hopefully, a nova any day now, there is a recurrent nova on the way. With the lines up, we can see a line joining Deneb to the bright star almost in the center of the Summer Triangle. That bright star is Albireo, just above the constellations Vulpecula and Sagitta. Albireo is a double star, and it’s interesting enough that we’ve paid particular attention to it in a piece about double stars on this website already. Along the east edge of the triangle is Delphinus, a reasonably famous constellation, though small it has a clear diamond shape of reasonably bright stars. There’s a few other small constellations in the are here that look a little bit abstract and are difficult to recognize.

Just coming out of the eastern horizon are Pegasus and Andromeda, a little above Andromeda must be Cassiopeia, and a little higher again is Cepheus. Perseus is still partly under the horizon at this time. A lot of these shapes will get a little bit easier to recognize with the actual images. With the actual pictures projected on the sky, we can see what shapes are meant to be what. The odd trapezoid just ahead of Pegasus is now clearly the head of the horse, Equuleus, the Little Horse, or Equus Caput, the horses head. Just in between the tail of Aquila, the back of Sagittarius and Serpens Cauda is is Scutum, Scutum, the Shield. These are not the most famous constellations, but they’re up at this time of the year and they can help you fill in the gaps around the sky. Many of the constellations up at this time of year are quite famous. The constellations in the Summer triangle and the constellations of the zodiac for example. Some are more like Böötes, which is mostly famous really, for Arcturus and being able to follow Arcturus down to Spica. There are some lesser known constellations, but oftentimes they are smaller, though not in the case of Draco, Draco the Dragon which is a particularly big constellation. If we turn around, the northern sky, this will remain the same. We’ve got smaller less known constellations like Canes Venatici just under the tail of Ursa Major, and just below them again is Coma Berenice or Bernice’s Hair. I always forget the name of this particular constellation, Coma Berenice, that’s the actual name. It can be written Bernice’s Hair in English instead of in Latin, but that is a little bit confusing for me. I don’t speak Latin, but I’m much more used to seeing the names of the constellations in Latin than in English.

We are going to keep pushing forward towards morning time. Sunrise around the solstice is a popular time to go and take a look at the sky, and the constellations won’t have changed too much. This is partly because large constellations, like Virgo and even Sagittarius, take a while to cross the sky. From the time the top part of Virgo is up in the middle of the sky to the time that the very end of Virgo sets is a while, it takes a while for the Earth to turn enough for that constellation to come up and completely go away. Now that we are closer to morning time, Pisces is up just above the sunrise and under Andromeda and Pegasus, Triangulum just under Andromeda at the more easterly end. Perseus is, after coming up a lot more a well, though we’re still not seeing a lot of Auriga, just the bright star Capella about the east, almost north east. That’s going to come up more as we get a little bit later into the year.

Another small constellation up in the east in the morning is Lacerta. Lacerta is the Lizard, but it looks much more like a salamander to me. This is another, smaller constellation, and as I mentioned in one of the previous pieces, some of these constellations are newer. Some of them were created by Johannes Hevelius, a Polish astronomer who created some very accurate maps of the stars. Lacerta is one such constellation. In breaking up the stars, extra constellations were added. The constellations were originally used for stories and for remembering things, they weren’t really used for astronomy the way that we do it today, so extra constellations helped to divide up the sky more evenly. Having particular constellations along the ecliptic did make it easier for ancient astronomers to track things. One such astronomer was Claudius Ptolemy who wrote the Almagest. Claudius was one of many famous historical Ptolemies, this one a Roman-Greek Ptolemy. Thanks to the existence of the zodiacal constellations along the ecliptic, it was easier to chart the progress of things like the Moon and the Sun because these stars were such recognizable and well known shapes at the time. Just under Virgo, setting under the horizon, the edge of Corvus is still up by morning another one of my favorite constellations. It was nice and prominent a few months ago, but now it is getting a lot harder to see.

We’ll come back a little bit closer to sunset and then we’ll push out to the countryside. The sky is going to fill up with even more stars, but the constellations in the sky aren’t going to change. Some of them are going to get easier to see, whereas some of them will maybe get a little bit trickier to see, Virgo in particular. I think because a lot of the stars in Virgo aren’t incredibly bright, it can be trickier to recognize Virgo with more stars in the sky. If we push a little bit later, Leo has a very distinct shape with the sickle, though it is going to be quite low once the sky is dark, and even Corona Borealis is pretty clear, making that crown like shape. Hercules on the other hand, even though there is a sort of a trapezoid in there somewhere, it’s pretty tough to pick out. The kite shape, almost a diamond shape, at the top of Boötes is a little bit easier to pick out. Especially in the countryside, the area of the sky within that diamond looks a little bit empty. That’s not the Boötes Void that people speak about, when people speak about the Boötes Void it’s something a little bit different, a region of deep space with “only” sixty or so galaxies in a huge area. We’re not going to see a load of the Milky Way on the 10th, simply because the Moon is in the sky and in such a close position to the Milky Way, but where the Milky Way should be, there is a kind of curving line of stars, the shape of the serpent that Ophiuchus is carrying, the serpent being carried by the serpent bearer. The Serpent bearer itself looks a bit abstract and is hard to spot. Sagitta and Vulpecula are very tricky to spot, right in the middle of the Summer Triangle, but Delphinus still stands out thanks to that little diamond shape.

Pushing forward towards morning time in the countryside, we’ll see that the pattern continues. Some of the constellations become easier to see, others get lost in the sea of stars that we’re seeing in a dark sky. The Square of Pegasus isn’t too bad, that’s reasonably easy to see. Capricornus is definitely there somewhere, I know it must be in between Sagittarius and Pisces, and we know Pisces is just under Pegasus, but it’s really tough to pull out the stars involved, Capricornus is not the most recognizable shape. Cassiopeia is still pretty recognizable, a W shape in the sky, with Cepheus just a little bit higher. It seems that Cepheus isn’t that recognizable, the square shape isn’t standing out so clearly. Bringing back up the lines and of course the shapes seem so obvious when the lines are there joining every together. The lines will show the part of the sky with Aquarius and Capricornus, but without help it’s tough to pick out those constellations clearly. With the lines up, of course, a lot of the rest are very, very easy, but we’re still seeing that kind of line of stars there with Ophiuchus and Serpens, we’re still seeing that crown for Corona Borealis, of course, it fits the name, one of the constellations that really looks like what it’s supposed to look like.

Very quickly turning back around to the north, Canes Venatici and Coma Berenice are a lot more visible with the lines, being pretty small constellations. Draco is also a lot clearer, as it is pretty faint despite being large. Camelopardalis and a few of the other less famous constellations are also a lot easier to see, the Lizard Lacerta for example. Of course, looking to the north, even in the middle of the night, we’re still going to get a little bit of a glow, and at this time of the month the Moon is also going to interfere with a lot of the fainter objects, so knowing where some of the constellations are from the city, it’ll help make sure that you can still find them even when you’re losing some stars. Not because there is artificial light in the countryside, but because there is that natural light of the midnight Sun, our midnight twilight, and the Moon.

I do hope you get to recognize some of those constellations, I hope that you enjoyed this piece, if you did, please do like it, and if you like this kind of content, you can subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel to see more. Thank you very much for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.