On Tuesday the 25th, the moon appears further east, above the far edge of Sagittarius the Archer. This constellation’s brightest stars form a shape recognizable as a teapot.
Whether clear or cloudy, the land is lit by the season’s amazing insect light show. Fireflies! Blinking, streaking lightning bugs elicit in us the wonder of starlight and shooting stars close to the ground and up into the treetops.
The longest days of the year, from Friday the 19th – Wednesday the 24th, are 15 hours 16 minutes, which leaves 8 hours 44 minutes from sundown to sunup, the shortest nights of the year. For the rest of June and through the first week of July, nights are barely 8 hours long when dawn and dusk are taken into account.
Planet Jupiter, visible in the east soon after sundown, dominates the eastern periphery of the crowded field of brilliant stars known as the Winter Circle or Winter Hexagon.
In deepening twilight, above Venus the planet Mars emerges, with its dim but steady, rusty-gold to orange light. The two planets appear closer together each evening, an exquisite show culminating on the 20th when a waxing, eyelash crescent moon joins the pair the day before their closest approach.
In mid-January the northern hemisphere comes out of the darkest days of the year, the days on either side of the winter solstice. At a quickened pace, daylight lifts the late afternoon. An increase to 9 hours 57 minutes will be experienced on January 31.
There was a telescope in front of the Mason Library: I thought: 'I’ll look into space to put local politics in perspective. Earth is so disheartening right now.'
