June 2024 Astronomy

What to see in the Sky

For guidance on reading the tables for beginners – please go here

Since the summer solstice is on June 20. This month has the latest evening twilights and shortest nights. Also the “bug season” is upon us, making the limited dark skies a bit less than inviting.

Regardless, the Milky Way is rising in the east as evening twilight ends. If your urban sky is not dark enough to see it, you can image it running between the stars Altair low in the east and Deneb up to its left. The third and brightest star of the Summer Triangle  (Vega) is up to the right of Deneb.

Entries are in Eastern Time and only require time zone correction. Do not use the correction from the “Ottawa-Time” table. Saskatchewan and parts of BC and Ontario do not use daylight savings. In these regions, subtract 1-hour from these times from March 10 to November 3.

When at Opposition, planets will appear on the opposite side of the sky from the Sun – very roughly on the meridian at midnight. Conjunctions are when the planet has the same “longitude” as the Sun. A Superior Conjunction is when the planet is on the  other side of the Sun, and an Inferior Conjunction is when it is between the Earth and the Sun. Only Mercury and Venus can be  at Inferior Conjunction. Maximum elongation is when Mercury and Venus appear farthest from the Sun in our sky. This occurs  either in our morning eastern sky (mor.) or our western evening sky (eve.). Do not apply the Ottawa-correction times to the times in this table.

Posted on Thursday, May 30th, 2024
Filed under Astronomy | Environment

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