Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to be looking ahead into the month of July. For the beginning of July, things will still look quite similar to June. However, we are past the summer solstice, so the sky will start getting dark earlier. We still have Venus in the evening, but as we move later in the month, Venus will appear lower in the sky. Venus and the Moon are quite close together on the 17th. Jupiter is still above the horizon if we come back towards the beginning of the month, just barely. Jupiter is still technically above the horizon for the beginning of the month, but it is moving towards conjunction with the Sun, so Jupiter will end up behind the Sun quite soon. We’re starting to get a reasonably dark sky by 11:30, but of course we’re still quite close to the solstice, we’re still going to have a little bit of sunlight all through the night for the first part of the month.

Once the sky is reasonably dark, on the 1st of July, the Moon will be quite close to full. It will be at about 96% full, because we did have a Full Moon at the end of June. We will have another Full Moon at the end of July with the New Moon being pretty close to the middle of the month. If we move forward into the month, we’ll get the Moon out of the sky. At sunset Scorpius and Sagittarius are both above the horizon by the time the Sun is going down. The summer triangle is still with us all night long, we are still in summer even though we’re past the solstice. We have Saturn coming up as we come up to 2 o’clock in the morning. Saturn is going to be easier and easier to see in the morning as we get later in the month, because it will be further and further from the sunrise. Also, we’re going to start seeing the square of Pegasus and Andromeda, those constellations will start to be a little bit more prominent as well.

Coming up here to morning time, we have Mars. Mars will also get easier to see as we get later in the month, but it won’t be as drastic of a change as Saturn. Mars is still moving away from us around the Sun, but the Earth is orbiting the Sun faster, so we are starting to catch up with it, but it will be another few months before Mars really becomes visible in the evening. We’ll come back to the 4th and we’ll see how low in the sky we can see Mars. There’s quite a bit of sunlight glow, but mars is above the horizon at just about 3:30 in the morning. Nearby are the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, and just next to Mars is Uranus. So of course this would be pretty tough to see, it would be easier to see from the equator, but Mars and Uranus are having a fairly close conjunction. These planetary conjunctions, particularly Mars in the morning and Venus in the evening, because they are both so close to sunset and sunrise, the conjunctions that they are taking part in are going to be hard to see. from here in Ireland, they’re going to be occurring with lots of sunlight/twilight glow in the sky.

We’ll take a look over to the western horizon again at sunset and we will get rid of the trees and buildings. That should show Jupiter certainly in view and above the horizon, but barely. Even at the beginning of the month it’s tough to see, and as we move later, it drops out of view. We can see the Moon and Venus coming fairly close together, as well as Venus coming quite close to Regulus. Looking on the 8th, Venus and Regulus are very close together, but it is very tough to see with the glow of the Sun. As Venus gets lower in the sky, it does get easier and we can see the rest of Leo after sunset, which will help you to tell that Venus is next to Regulus. However, from here in Ireland, that is still a lot of sunset glow and if we bring back the more normal, treed and building, horizon; that puts them out of view, so it is going to be a tricky one to catch. Thankfully, we do have something coming up towards the end of the month that may be a little bit easier. We’re going to push through to the 29th, which does bring us back around to the Full Moon, at 99.8%, which is not ideal. We are going to look for the Delta Aquariid meteor shower, and of course, having the Full Moon in the sky, well, that’s not going to help.

Bringing up our meteor shower markers, and the Southern Delta Aquariids aren’t alone. We’ve got the antihelion as always, but also the Alpha Capricornids, the July Gamma Draconids, there are a few other meteor showers going on at this time. We’ll move a little bit later to get as many radiants as we can into the sky. Unfortunately, they are all with the Full Moon. The July Gamma Draconids are peaking on the 28th, but their maximum is only going to be about 5. They are quite high in the sky, and being high in the sky means that they will be closer to the zenith, so they will get closer to the actual zenith hourly rate, compared to meteor showers whose radiants are appearing lower in the sky. The Alpha Capricornids radiate from quite low, peaking on the 30th of July, with another low zenith hourly maximum rate of about 5. The Eta Eridanids aren’t peaking until August, nor are the Perseids, one of the better meteor showers. The Piscis Austrinids are very low in the sky, certainly a better meteor shower for southern skies, again peaking at the end of July, with another low maximum rate.

The Southern Delta Aquariids, their zenith hourly max is much higher, up to 25. They’re peaking on the 30th and we are through to the 30th, just barely. We’ve just come through to the morning of the 30th and their current zenith hourly rate is 23, pretty close to their peak. It’s going down as we move backwards, so we’ll move through the day of the 23rd and, it does look like they’re peaking while they are under the horizon for us. Back to night and they’re down to 23 again by the time they come back up. So it looks like we will see them either side of the peak. The current zenith hourly rate, that is how many meteors they would be making at this time if they were at the zenith, but because they’re so low in the sky, we’ll only see about 3, partly due to the light of the Moon, partly due to the light pollution. Just to see how much of a difference it would make, we’ll move out to the countryside. With no light pollution, our local hourly rate goes up to 9. The July Gamma Draconids are still still at about 3, the Alpha Capricornids are 4, all pretty close to their peak as well. These of course will all add together along with the amount of meteors coming from the antihelion to give us something like 20 meteors an hour, hopefully, from our location here in Ireland at least.

Now that we’re in a dark sky and through to the end of the month, we can see that Uranus and the Pleiades have moved ahead of Mars. Moving back through the month, we can see them getting closer together. Mars and Uranus are both moving around the Sun in the same direction, but Uranus is so much further from us and orbiting the Sun so much more slowly. Due to that, our motion around the Sun really changes Uranus’s apparent position. We’re coming around the Sun and getting closer to Uranus, which will make Uranus closer to the middle of our sky at midnight. Mars and the Earth, we’re both still moving in the same direction, but Mars is moving so much quicker than Uranus that its motion through space is influencing the position in which we see it in the sky and how quickly we see it moving. As we look at these planets in the morning coming up to sunrise, now that we’re through to the 19th and in a dark sky we have the Pleiades and the Hyades of Taurus. We’re really getting back to that winter sky, and as we move forward here into August, we’ll get a little bit of Orion, but of course, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

There are a few other events occurring, in fact, if we move through the month looking at the morning sky, the Moon will come very close to the Pleiades. We’ll lock onto the Moon and move through a little bit of time, the Moon and the Pleiades get quite close together just as the Sun is rising for us here in Ireland. This means the occultation, or very close conjunction, of the Pleiades by the Moon is going to be visible from a different location on Earth, and it’s not the only thing. Even the conjunction between Venus and Regulus, which is technically visible from here in Ireland, it’s going to be much easier to see from closer to the equator.

There are a couple of things that we’re going to take a look at next video time. What I’ve said here is broadly true for northern latitudes, but there’s a few specific events that will only be visible from other locations, and thankfully, a commenter has let me know where those locations are. I hope you’ll join me next time to take a look at those other events in July and I hope that you enjoyed this piece. I hope that you get to see how the sky is changing over the coming weeks. If you did enjoy this piece, then please do like it. If you like this kind of content, then please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for watching and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.