salutations celestial sight seers I'm David fuller welcome to eyes on the sky
what's up this week or should I say what's up this season as
we are heading towards the Solstice which will occur on June 20th there will
be a number of things that change in the season and so I'll go through some of
the major things that we can see naked eye in the night sky and point out a
couple things that we'll try to look at as the season progresses over in the
western portion of the sky we have the Big Dipper towards the north and you can
arc to Arcturus from the handle of the Dipper and then speed on to Spica over
this way Arcturus and Spica are some of the brighter stars in the night sky
Arcturus is the fourth brightest star so that one's pretty easy to see it's gonna
be nearly overhead for most of us as we're especially in for in-between say
30 to 50 degrees north latitude if you're further south from there it's
gonna appear further towards the north towards the south we can see Antares in
Scorpius is starting to rise now I'm looking at this at about 10 o'clock at
night so if you wait an hour so that's gonna be a little bit higher in the sky
and you'll notice over towards the east southeast
we've got Saturn and Jupiter just getting ready to jump above the horizon
so literally an hour ahead at least for me they're up about 10 degrees for some
of you that are further north you may need to wait until about midnight or so
for them to be high enough up to be able to view adequately but in that couple
hour window things should be fairly dark and that's what we'll have happening
over that way towards the east we've got another fairly bright asterism so it's
not really a constellation it's more just a grouping of stars that are bright
stars there's Vega that will be highest up if
you're facing east Deneb will be to your left towards the north and then Altair
is almost directly east and below and to the right of where Vega is at those are
fairly far apart if we measure these with our measuring tool you can see how
Deneb to Vega is good almost 25 degrees so if you hold your arm I'll fully out
and put your thumb and pinky out that's going to be about that distance between
those two stars to help you identify them and then
you've got a lot longer to go if you want to hit all the way down to Altair
that's gonna be 34 degrees from Vega and then if we go to Altair up to Deneb
we're looking at a little further than that so that's 40 degrees but you can
spy Deneb and Vega and then measure that to be able to help you find that summer
triangle as we move forward about a month we can see how Saturn and Jupiter
are gonna be nice and high now at 10 o'clock at night they'll be even more
towards the south if you wait another hour - they are about seven degrees
apart so just might fit them in a binocular field of view but that would
be a little bit difficult they're gonna be much closer together as the year
progresses especially into December but for right now they're close enough that
they're easy to see Jupiter will appear much brighter than Saturn this kind of
makes it seem a little deceiving like they're almost the same brightness
Saturn looks quite a bit dimmer because Jupiter is that almost -3 magnitude
that's very very bright whereas Saturn comes in at magnitude 0
so that's a lot different that's 6 times dimmer so that's quite a bit but that's
where you can find those as towards the southeast in mid-july or so now you
notice that the Big Dipper has rotated towards the west as has Arcturus and
Spica and we have the Milky Way very much
not quite overhead but really up there in the sky and I've boosted the
visibility of this in Stellarium so you can see that better and this particular
area right here just above where Sagittarius is see this teapot kind of
shape right near Saturn and Jupiter this is a wonderful area to sweep with
binoculars so much to see there you don't even necessarily have to know what
you're looking at just take some binoculars that are 7 x 35 or larger
and just peruse through here towards the south that's gonna be beautiful also I
want to show you something that is going to be coming up then if we go to our sky
and options window I have added a couple of comets that you'll be able to see not
with the labels and markers these are actually solar system objects and we
need to pull that up this way and if i swing that in that way
you can see how comet 2020 f3 NEOWISE is over there to the northwest and
fading from view is comet C/2017 t2 pan-starrs these are gonna get really
close together by the following month into august about august 11th or so
they'll be very close to each other about a couple degrees away but you can
will start to focus on NEOWISE if it survives it's pass around the Sun
later part of this month in June so hopefully it does that and we'll be able
to see that into July but just know that that's some possibilities of what we
might be able to see and then here's that summer triangle set of stars that
are fairly high up - there's some great objects in there if we go ahead into
August now the Milky Way is almost entirely overhead at ten o'clock even if
you scoot ahead another hour it's still way up there beautiful sight to be able
to see especially if you go to some dark skies we have lost Spica off towards the
west but Arcturus is still over that
direction the Big Dipper is getting a little bit lower in the northwest but
now that summer triangle is really right overhead Vega and Deneb and Altair are
just very easily visible they're gonna be the some of the brightest stars that
you see besides Arcturus but we also have our planets that are still hanging
around so anytime that the sky is nice and steady those are gonna be a great
time to look at those anytime the sky is clear and maybe the stars are twinkling
a bit the planets may not be great to look at but then we can try to look at
some of the deep sky objects that are in this portion of the Milky Way as it
extends all the way from Sagittarius through Aquila the Eagle, Cygnus the Swan
here just past Cepheus and then Cassiopeia over in the northeastern part
of the sky this is a beautiful time to see that summer Milky Way so definitely
get outside and take a look at those if you have the opportunity the last thing
I will show you is kind of how we get an interesting perspective on what we see
in our cosmos so if I take our deep sky objects and kind of boost these
with the labels and markers that are available and just sort of do this and
push those up you can see how the galaxies are off here way beyond the
plane of our galaxy and then these yellow objects here these are globular
clusters these are all the objects that are actually orbiting around our galaxy
itself so m3 is way out here we've got m5 out here and then some of the closer
ones there's a number of other closer ones down here in this section by the
centre of our galaxy because the central part of our Milky Way is right here past
this teapot so you're gonna find some of them in here too but if you look over on
this side there's also some over this way and m15 and m2 but then the open
clusters and nebulae really appear along that plane you can see these dotted
lines and then the green ones and even some of these planetary nebulae like
these these are largely along that plane of the Milky Way so that's how you can
know what kinds of objects you may be looking at relative to where the plane
of our Milky Way is that doesn't mean they're exclusively in those areas but
that generally tends to hold true so that's what we have look to look forward
to for the coming summer season in the northern hemisphere I hope you enjoyed
this video if you liked it please share it with other people subscribe on
YouTube and continue to follow me on Facebook and Twitter that's all for this
week keep your eyes on the sky and your outdoor lights aimed down so we can all
see what's up I'm David fuller wishing you clear and
dark skies