For July 2026, the moon is last quarter on July 7, passing north of Saturn in the dawn sky. The waning crescent moon passes north of Mars on July 11. The new moon is on July 14. The waxing crescent moon passes below Venus in the SW twilight on July 17. It is the first quarter on July 21. The full (thunder) moon is on July 29.
Mercury is lost in the Sun’s glare in July, but Venus is dominating the western dusk. It is a waning gibbous disk, 70% sunlit as July begins, but only 55% at month’s end. It will appear half-lit in early August at its greatest eastern elongation. As it is overtaking us, it grows from 16” to 21” across this month. It has a spectacular conjunction with Regulus, the brightest star of Leo, on July 9, when it is less than a degree to the upper right of the star, just resolved with the naked eye. Great target for your smartphone. Zoom in!
Mars is in Taurus, in the dawn sky. Jupiter sets an hour after sunset in the northwest on July 1 and, by midmonth, is lost in the Sun’s glare until September. Saturn is in Pisces in the morning sky, rising about midnight now.
Visit skymaps.com website and download the map for July; it will have a more extensive calendar.
High overhead is the Big Dipper, and good scouts know to use the pointers at the end of the bowl to find Polaris, the pole star, staying 30 degrees high in our night sky all year long. By midnight, the Earth’s rotation will carry the Dipper low in the northwest sky, yet Polaris will still be in the same place. This was critical to early navigators like Columbus, for if they kept Polaris at the same altitude in their northern sky, they knew they were sailing due west, leading them to the New World.
If you drop south from the bowl of the Big Dipper, Leo the Lion is in the southwest. Note the Egyptian Sphinx is based on the shape of this Lion in the sky.
Taking the arc in the Dipper’s handle, we “arc” southeast to bright orange Arcturus, the brightest star of Spring. Cooler than our yellow Sun, and much poorer in heavy elements, some believe its strange motion reveals it to be an invading star from another smaller galaxy. This is the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, now colliding with the Milky Way in Sagittarius in the summer sky. It lies on the far edge of our own barred spiral and may account for the formation of our bar. Moving almost perpendicular to the plane of our Milky Way, Arcturus was the first star in the sky whose proper motion across the historic sky was noted by Edmund Halley.
Arcturus is currently the brightest star overhead, but that can change any day now. To the NE of Arcturus is the northern crown, Corona Borealis. Its brightest jewel is Gemma (or Alphecca, here), in the center of the crown.
Spike south to Spica, the hot blue star in Virgo, then curve to Corvus the Crow, a four-sided grouping. North of Corvus, in the arms of Virgo, is where our large scopes will show members of the Virgo Supercluster, a swarm of over a thousand galaxies about 50 million light-years distant.
To the east, Hercules is well up, with the nice globular cluster M-13 marked on your sky map and visible in binocs. The brightest star of the northern hemisphere, Vega (from Carl Sagan’s novel and movie, “Contact”), rises in the northeast as twilight deepens. Twice as hot as our Sun, it appears blue-white, like most bright stars.
Northeast of Lyra is Cygnus, the Swan, flying down the Milky Way. Its bright star, Deneb, at the top of the “northern cross” is one of the luminaries of the Galaxy, about 50,000 times more luminous than our Sun and around 3,000 light-years distant. of the Galaxy, and a little above (north) of Vega.
South of Deneb, on a dark, clear night, note the “Great Rift," a dark nebula in front of our solar system as we revolve around the core of the Milky Way in the Galactic Year of 250 million of our own years. The star at the south end of the Northern Cross is one of my favorites, Albireo, the “gator star”, a notable orange and blue double at 20X.
Altair is the third bright star of the summer triangle. It lies in Aquila, the Eagle, and is much closer than Deneb; it lies within about 13 light years of our Sun. Just east of Altair is the tiny, faint, but very distinctive Delphinus, one of the rare constellations that indeed look exactly like their names. Think of the leaping dolphin statue in front of Gulf Breeze High School, and you will have no problem picking it out on a dark, clear night.
This Dolphin in the myths carried the Greek Poet, Arion, to safety when he was robbed and thrown off the ship that was carrying him and his considerable fortune home to Corinth. It is claimed that his singing of a dirge before being cast overboard caused his savior to come to his aid. Shades of Jonah and the whale!
South of Altair is the famed “Pillars of Creation," in the center of the Eagle Nebula, M-16. This superb portrait is by EAAA member James Schultz with a 14” telescope. This region of star birth is a rich mix of condensing dark globules collapsing to make new stars, young blue stars shining so brightly that their stellar winds drive away the gas and dust, and, of course, leftovers around them condensing into new young planets, some of them rocky like our own Earth. One of the paradoxes of star-forming regions like this is that for such gravitational collapse to begin, the region must be cold, dense, and dark. From such darkness comes a great light.
As we head south, Antares is well up at sunset in Scorpius. It appears reddish (its Greek name means rival of Ares or Mars to the Latins) because it is half as hot as our yellow Sun; it is bright because it is a bloated red supergiant, big enough to swallow up our solar system all the way out to Saturn’s orbit! Another of James' shots features one of the most colorful regions in the whole sky, near Antares. This is the Rho Ophiuchi dust cloud, and Antares is the bright orange star at lower right.
Scorpius is the brightest constellation in the sky, with 13 stars brighter than the pole star Polaris! Note the fine naked-eye clusters M-6 and M-7, just to the left of the Scorpion’s tail.
Just a little east of the Scorpion’s tail is the teapot shape of Sagittarius, which lies toward the center of the Milky Way. From a dark sky site, you can pick out the fine stellar nursery, M-8, the Lagoon Nebula, like a cloud of steam coming out of the teapot’s spout. This view of our home galaxy stretching overhead is for about midnight on July evenings, looking from the South to overhead.
My favorite way of learning the many deep sky objects (open and globular clusters, bright nebulae like the Lagoon, and the many dark nebulae that make up the “Dark Constellations” of the Inca) is to use low power binoculars (I prefer 8x40s because they are light and easier to hold steady with my Parkinson’s, but younger folks with a better grip on life will find 10x50’s will show fainter objects and at high power) and lean back in a lawn chair (also an ideal way to observe meteor showers like August’s Perseids with just your naked eyes) and slowly sweep up and down the Galaxy, marking off the deep sky objects on your SkyMap as you spot them.
Also, most new smartphones can get fine shots with timed exposures on a tripod like this one, using night camera or Starry Camera Pro programs. Try out your phone on a dark evening. For iPhones, download the app “Nocturne by Unistellar” for free. Its options include labelling the constellation lines and myths to help learn these constellations.
The Escambia Amateur Astronomers return to Casino Beach for our Pavilion Stargaze Season on the first quarter moon. Meet us south of the famed Beach Ball Water Tower and bring your smartphone to image the Sun (before sunset with our solar scopes), Moon, and constellations. We have free star charts and will show you what’s up. The gazes, if clear skies permit, will be on Fridays and Saturdays for these weekends: July 24-25, August 14-15, September 18-19, and October 16-17. The Milky Way over the dark Gulf of Mexico will be great then.
For deep skies with much less light pollution, on the weekends of the third quarter moon, we continue our cooperation with the Florida State Parks at Big Lagoon State Park. Here, the emphasis is on learning to observe and photograph the night sky with binoculars or your own telescopes and smartphones or other cameras. While the Pavilion parking is free, normal entry fees ($6 per car) to Big Lagoon still apply, and remember to check in at the front gate before it closes at sunset! For this summer, we move our gazes to the north end of the boat ramp parking lot. We certainly encourage the many campers and scout troops to join us at our site, at the amphitheater at the end of the access road. Our gazes for the best imaging of the Milky Way, constellations, and other galaxies are on these Saturdays: July 11, August 8, September 15, and October 13. Bring your smartphones, and we will teach you how to use apps like Nocturne above to image the constellations, the Milky Way, meteors, satellites, and hopefully, more auroras.
Our planetarium show for Friday, July 10, at PSC’s Space and Science Theatre is “Dinosaurs: Passage to Pangea” at 6 p.m. Be sure to get your tickets at Purple Pass. The last ten shows have been sold out! Tickets are only $6, and clear skies permitting, sun spotting and lunar observing will follow the show.
The club will meet at 7 p.m. in room 1709 on Friday, July 31. For more information on the Escambia Amateur Astronomers, join us on Facebook, visit our website at www.eaaa.net, or contact our sponsor, Lauren Rogers, at Pensacola State at lrogers@pensacolastate.edu. You can also schedule special gazes at the Airport Approach at Langley and McAlister by calling our moderator, Dr. Wayne Wooten, at (850) 291-9334 or messaging him on Facebook.
