Jared May: What's Up, June 30, 2021 - July 6, 2021

This week is not looking promising for stargazers and amateur astronomers in Ohio. The forecast is predicting mostly cloudy skies over the next week. The nighttime temperatures are predicted to fluctuate between the upper 50s and the low 70s – quite the swing. Sunset hovers right around 9 PM since we just recently passed the summer solstice.

In the event of clear skies, or at least some gaps in the clouds, be on the lookout for the last quarter moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the Hercules Globular Cluster. At the end of this post, I’ll include a short section on how to take a simple but fantastic image of the Milky Way at the John Glenn Astronomy Park for the clear skies next week.

The moon will be passing through its last quarter phase on Thursday, July 1. It will be visible during the daytime hours and again when it rises at 2 AM. The rising moon is one of the most impressive things. When it hangs in the sky surrounded by blackness, we have no reference points to visualize its size. However, when the moon is near the horizon, we have houses and trees and other foreground objects to compare its size to – and it always looks huge. This size change is, of course, just an illusion. The moon is the same size near the horizon as it is when it is high in the sky.

The third quarter phase of the Moon, visible this week, is less commonly seen at night since it rises after midnight.

If you are a morning person, look low near the eastern horizon this week just before sunrise to spot a bright “star”. This is the innermost planet, Mercury. The Earth orbits the sun every 365 days, whereas Mercury completes its orbit every 88 days. So you will easily be able to track its motion in the sky over the course of just a few days or weeks.

Mercury moves swiftly from the morning sky to the evening sky, as it takes just 88 days to orbit the sun. Right now it is in the morning sky.

This week as the sun sets, peer low in the western skies to spot Venus, the brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon. Just like the moon, Venus will appear to have different phases as it cycles through its orbit which can be revealed by a telescope. Look just 5° up and left of Venus to spot Mars. From Earth, we cannot see the phases of Mars (or any planet outside of Earth’s orbit). This is because we are always interior to the outer planets and will never be behind them to see the “dark sides” that give the inner planets (and our moon) different phases.

Brilliant Venus, the brightest “star” in the sky, will help you spot the much fainter, but still easy to see, Mars in the evening skies.

After the sun has set and the stars are out, pull out your binoculars or telescope and look nearly directly overhead to spot one of the more famous clusters in the sky – M13 the Hercules Globular Cluster. It is a collection of hundreds of thousands of densely packed stars. It will appear like a patch of fuzz in the sky through your binoculars. The M13 globular cluster sits over 22 thousand light-years away and resides in the halo region of the galaxy (Globular clusters in the plane of the Milky-Way galaxy are only “passing through”. Most are above and below the plane.).

M13 is one of the most spectacular objects in small (or large) telescopes in the entire sky.

If you are an avid stargazer curious to try your hand at astrophotography, here is a quick walkthrough for taking a great Milky Way galaxy image:

Remember that astrophotography is an art just as much as it is a science, so it can be very difficult sometimes. You will need a DSLR camera, a tripod, and a lens (the 18-55mm kit lens that comes with the camera is great) –that’s it. Change your camera to “M”, the manual setting. Googling the next steps for your camera may help. Change your ISO to 1600, open the lens aperture all the way (the lowest F/stop number), and set your shutter speed to 30 seconds. If you have an image processing software on your computer like Gimp, Capture One, Lightroom or Photoshop, shoot in “Raw”, instead of JPEG to ensure that you capture all the data that your camera is capable.

Make sure you put your lens into manual focus and focus the camera on something far away, like a distant light post. Many cameras allow you to focus in “live mode”. If so, go into Live Mode, point your camera on the brightest star you can find, zoom in using the “magnify” feature on the back the camera, and focus. Then leave the focus setting alone.

Set your camera on the tripod and point it up and southeast. Make sure you do this after sunset, when the Milky Way is up in the sky. You can use a 3s self-timer so that pressing the shutter button will not shake the camera during the photo. Take the photo and remember not to touch your camera while it is exposing for the 30 seconds. Change the focus and framing as you need but, congratulations, you have just imaged the Milky Way and thousands and thousands of stars!

The weather will certainly not be ideal for stargazing nor taking that amazing Milky Way image, but there may be some partially clear nights during or past the weekend. Enjoy the warm nights and be sure to wear bug spray while stargazing now as the Ohio mosquitoes are in full force. Be on the lookout through the gaps in the clouds for the third quarter moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the Hercules Cluster.

Clear Skies!
Jared