Late July, Early August Sky, 2021 (Video including Three of Summer’s Favorite Star Clusters)

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Today we look at the sky for the week beginning Sunday, July 25th. With this edition of the sky tonight, the sky has changed somewhat since last week. In the morning, Mercury is in Cancer with the sun and lost in the solar glare before sunrise. The evening sky sees Venus remaining prominently placed with Mars setting earlier than last week.

Scorpio with red supergiant Antares, the heart of the Scorpion, is on the meridian at 9:20 PM, EDT. Sagittarius is due east and prominently placed by midnight. As they have been for the previous 3 weeks, Jupiter and Saturn are both well placed by 10:30 PM EDT. The waning gibbous moon is in Pisces and rises at 11:00 PM on the evening of July 27th. The ethereal majesty of the summer milky way and galactic center, 25,000 light years distant, join Sagittarius on the meridian.

As we did last week, the great Summer Triangle, the hallmark of the summer sky in the Northern Hemisphere, is well placed midway up in the east for North America. Following the Milky Way northward from the galactic center we find this asterism, consisting of brilliant, blue-white Vega in Lyra, the Harp, blue-white Supergiant Deneb in Cygnus and clear-white Altair in Aquila, the Eagle.

3 Favorite Clusters of Summer

In this week’s edition of The Sky Tonight, we’d like to highlight 3 favorites of the summer sky, 2 globular clusters and one galactic cluster:
Messier-4
Messier-22
Messier-11 (The Wild Duck Cluster).

This video should be considered an ‘Evergreen’ video for the summer months. In this video that compliments our Patreon Podcast of the same name (also free of charge), we discuss 3 favorite star clusters of summer.

Note: with the exception of the Earth, Mercury and Pluto, all planets of the solar system are visible during this time period.


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