High overhead is the Big Dipper, and its handle will be the guide to the biggest news in cosmology in 2023.

Visit download the map for July for a more extensive list of best objects for the naked eyes, binoculars, and scopes on the back of the map. They will be at equinox, facing the Sun and earth edge on, in May 2025, and appear so thin as to vanish for several weeks in most earth based telescopes. I observed Saturn last week, and it is notable just how much the rings have flattened since last year. Both will return to the evening sky by fall. Things much more placid in the dawn sky, with Saturn rising about 11 p.m. Use binoculars to resolve them, with Venus just below them. To make it more interesting, Mercury comes out from behind the Sun in late July, passing just north of Venus on July 24, and appearing to merge naked eye with Regulus on July 28. Mars passes just above Regulus July 9, and Venus comes close, but never reaches Regulus, passing south of it on July 19. As July begins, Mars lies midway between brilliant Venus (so bright it is visible in daylight now) and Regulus in Leo.

She will spend the last four months of 2023 in the dawn sky. For the last two months, faster moving Venus has been overtaking more distant Mars in the western sky night by night, but she never catches him! Instead she has reached the edge of her orbit, half lit in the telescope, and for July, appears as a larger but slimmer crescent each evening, heading back west to pass between us and the Sun in August. Planets in Greek means “the wanderers.' Never more than this month’s evening sky, as the complex motions of inferior Venus retrograding contrasts with superior Mars in direct motion. The very slender waxing crescent lies just to the right of Mercury low in the west 45 minutes after sunset on July 18, is just north of the triangle of the Venus, Regulus, and Mars on July 19 (great photo op!), and above the trio on July 20 just right of Mars.

The last quarter moon is July 9, and the waning crescent passes Jupiter on July 11. The waning gibbous moon passes south of Saturn on July 7. Obviously, the fact that we in the northern hemisphere are tilted most toward it in summer makes a far bigger difference in our seasons, for this distance variation is only about 1% - our orbit is almost circular. The Earth is at aphelion, farthest from the Sun, on July 6, meaning the sun appears smallest and dimmest in our sky then. For July 2024, the Thunder Moon, is July 3.

I have lived a thousand years ch 29