• The full moon is on Monday, July 3, and it will appear to our south in Sagittarius. This is a super moon. The prefix Super means that this full moon will closely coincide with our satellite’s closest approach to earth in 2023. It will look bigger and brighter than usual. It’s called the Buck moon which is related to deer antler growth.
• The best time to view deep sky objects in July is from about July 8 to July 22. You need the moon to not be too visible in the sky to see most deep sky objects with binoculars or telescope. The new moon is Monday, July 17. On this night, the sun sets at 8:36 p.m. but it doesn’t get moderately dark for another hour. Our nights will now be gradually getting longer and the daylight shorter. This sequence of events started on the summer solstice back on June 21.
• July and August are the perfect times to view the summer Milky Way before and after midnight. The Milky Way will be between Scorpius to the right and Sagittarius to the left facing south. The accompanying photo is of Messier 17 which lies between Sagittarius and Scorpius in the Milky way glow. It’s also known as the Swan nebula, and it does look like an upside-down swan in my image. You especially see this shape visually through a telescope. This is a 21-minute exposure that I took from my backyard on August 7, 2021. It is 15 light years in diameter and between 5,000 and 6,000 light years distant. One of my favorite summer objects.
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