Howdy Star Gazers and welcome to this episode
of Star Trails. Drew here and I'll be your guide
to the night sky for the week starting July the
13th through the 19th. This week we welcome darker
skies, the return of Jupiter, and the first traces
of the Perseid meteor shower. Later in the show,
we turn the telescope around and examine how
the earth looks from different areas of our solar
system. Whether you're tuning in from the backyard,
the balcony, or just your imagination, I'm glad
you're here. So find a cozy spot, let your eyes
adjust, and let's see what the sky holds for
us this week. Let's start with the moon. We're
coming off the full buck moon, which reached
its peak on July the 10th. Hopefully, some of
you managed to catch this big moon as it stayed
fairly low to the horizon. Sadly, we had thunderstorms
here, so it wasn't visible. The moon will spin
the early part of this week in its waning gibbous
phase, gradually shrinking in brightness each
night. By Thursday, it reaches the last quarter
phase, with about half the moon illuminated.
Through a scope or binoculars, you'll see shadows
stretching across the surface. highlighting craters
and mountain ranges near the terminator line.
By the end of the week, the moon will be entering
a waning crescent phase. That means darker skies
for tracking down faint galaxies, star clusters,
and nebula. Now onto the planets. In the evening
sky, you'll still be able to spot Mars glowing
with its characteristic reddish hue. It's faint
this time of the year, but still visible just
after sunset, low in the western sky. Mercury
is also hanging around after sunset, especially
early in the week, but it's hugging the horizon,
so you'll need a clear flat view and some luck
with twilight timing. The best planetary viewing
is for early risers. Venus remains dazzling in
the morning sky. This week it's shining as bright
as ever, almost like a headlight, and gliding
near the famous Hyades and Pleiades star clusters
in the constellation Taurus. This alignment creates
a beautiful cosmic scene through binoculars or
a small telescope. Saturn rises in the late evening
and climbs higher into the southern sky before
dawn. It's slowly moving closer to opposition
later this summer, so the ringed planet is looking
especially good. Look for its golden glow near
the constellation Aquarius. Uranus is up too,
hovering close to the Pleiades and Taurus, not
far from Venus. Neptune is nearby, a little east
of Saturn. You can catch both Saturn and Neptune
about a degree apart this week, roughly the width
of the full moon. As always, you'll need a good
scope or binoculars to see Uranus and Neptune.
And finally, Jupiter is slowly creeping back
into the morning sky. It's faint right now, but
you might catch it above the eastern horizon
before sunrise by the weekend. Our constellations
and deep sky treasures are much the same as previous
weeks. Overhead, the Summer Triangle, made up
of the bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair,
is dominating the sky after dark. In Lyra, try
spotting the famous Ring Nebula, also known as
M57. You'll need a telescope to see its donut
-like shape, but it's well worth the effort.
Over in Cygnus, the Swan, check out the dumbbell
nebula M27. This is a planetary nebula visible
even through binoculars under dark skies. And
if you've got a scope and a good Oxygen 3 filter,
swing over to the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant
that stretches like wisps of smoke across the
sky. Draco coils high in the north, and if you
have a telescope, see if you can spot the tiny
but fascinating Cat's Eye Nebula. Looking lower
toward the southern horizon, Scorpius and Sagittarius
are rich with targets. Scorpius hosts the bright
red supergiant Antares, and Sagittarius, the
teapot, is packed with nebula and star clouds
along the heart of the Milky Way. In that area,
check out the lagoon nebula M8, the wild duck
cluster M11, and the butterfly cluster. The Milky
Way's core is glowing this time of year, so take
your time scanning through this star -rich region.
And here's a heads up, the Perseid meteor shower
begins this week. While it won't peak until mid
-August, the first few meteors may begin to streak
across the sky by July 17th. With the moon waning
and rising later each night, early morning hours
this week offer a growing window of dark skies.
If you're between midnight and dawn, you just
might catch an early Perseid or two. And if you're
observing Saturn this week, keep an eye out for
Titan, its largest moon. A Titan shadow transit
is predicted for the early hours of July the
18th. This transit is visible in backyard telescopes.
I'll include a link in the show notes with additional
information on this phenomenon, upcoming transits,
and how to catch them. Each week we peer out
into the cosmos describing the planets and constellations
that grace our sky. We chart the orbits of worlds,
track their brightness, and note how their appearance
changes with the seasons. We talk about how bright
Venus is and the red glow of Mars. We're always
describing what these distant places look like
from here on Earth. But what if we flip that
around? What if instead we asked, what does Earth
look like from other planets? How do we appear
in someone else's sky? Let's take a little journey,
not outward, but inward, and look at ourselves
through distant eyes. To begin, we head over
to our nearest neighbor, Venus. If you could
stand on the surface of Venus and somehow peer
through the thick sulfuric clouds, you'd see
Earth as a brilliant bluish star, never far from
the Sun. Just as Venus plays the role of Morning
Star or Evening Star for us, we play that same
role for them. Always close to the Sun, always
confined to the twilight sky. At its brightest,
Earth would gleam at magnitude negative 4 .1,
nearly as bright as Venus looks from Earth. With
a nice telescope on Venus, you'd see the Moon
as a dot alongside Earth. From Venus, Earth would
show slight phases, waxing and waning, shifting
from gibbous to full and back again. You'd never
see Earth as a crescent from Venus. It's too
far out for that. Now, from Earth, we never see
the outer planets in phases, so why would we
see Earth in phases from Venus? It has to do
with the Earth -Venus -Sun angle, which can become
quite significant depending on where the planets
are in their respective orbits. At greatest elongation,
when Earth is at the maximum angle away from
the Sun in the Venusian sky, Earth appears not
directly opposite the Sun, but offset. So only
part of its dayside is visible, rendering Earth
as a bright gibbous disk. When it's directly
behind the Sun at superior conjunction, Earth
is fully illuminated and looks full from Venus.
And Earth has been seen from even closer to the
Sun. In 2005, NASA's MESSENGER probe en route
to Mercury turned its camera outward and photographed
Earth from 66 million miles away. We appeared
as a bright star, outshining everything else
in the field. Now let's journey out to Mars.
From the red planet, Earth appears smaller and
dimmer. To Martian eyes, Earth would be a bright
speck, rarely far from the Sun. A telescopic
view of Earth has been recorded from Mars, and
it's a stunning image. In 2007, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter turned its camera back toward us and
captured the Earth and the Moon floating side
by side in space, both in half -phase. You can
actually see detail, not just light, but texture,
weather systems, and the oceans. That's from
127 million miles away. Now, let's go even farther
out, to the orbit of Saturn. In 2013, the Cassini
spacecraft took a moment from its study of the
ringed giant to look homeward. There, just below
Saturn's vast rings, was a tiny point of light.
That point was us. The photo was titled The Day
the Earth Smiled. For the first time, people
on Earth were invited to look up and wave, while
a camera out in the Saturnian system captured
our image. From nearly a billion miles away,
Earth was just a pixel, a flicker of sunlight
reflecting off oceans, ice, clouds, and continents,
all flattened into one shining speck. And that
image echoes another. Back in 1990, the Voyager
1 spacecraft, now past Neptune, was instructed
to turn around and take one final photo of its
home planet. What it captured became one of the
most iconic images in human history. We talked
about that image back on episode 51 earlier this
year. Of course, this is the famous pale blue
dot image where Earth, less than a pixel in size,
is caught in a ray of sunlight. It was Carl Sagan
who gave the photo its name and its voice. Consider
again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's
us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know,
everyone you ever heard of. Every human being,
whoever was, lived out their lives. That image
wasn't just a picture. It was a mirror, a chance
to see ourselves not as giants, but as fragile,
temporary, and rare. From out there, we're not
the center of the universe. We're not even especially
noticeable. We're just another point of light
among billions, brighter than some, fainter than
others. It's a useful shift in perspective. Looking
back at Earth reminds us that astronomy isn't
only about the distant and the unfamiliar. Sometimes
it's about remembering where we are in all of
this, how we fit into the grand map of the solar
system, and the quiet role we play in someone
else's sky. If the stars spoke to you this week
or if a question's been on your mind, I'd love
to hear it. Visit our website starrtrails .show
where you can contact me and explore past episodes.
Be sure to follow us on Blue Sky and YouTube.
Links are in the show notes. Until we meet again
beneath the stars, clear skies everyone.