Hello again, fellow Skywatchers. Here we are in the dog days of summer. In some ways, this time of year is not the best for viewing the night sky. The heat, humidity, mosquitoes, humidity haze, and evening clouds combined with late sunset and early sunrise all make it less more difficult, and not as much fun, as cooler times of the year. However, when it is clear in the evenings, this time of year can offer some of the steadiest seeing (lack of atmospheric turbulence). In addition, there are some spectacular objects for the hardy and determined.

Saturn is almost lost to us for this year. It is very low (about 15 degrees above the horizon) and almost due West in Leo below the lion's hips at dusk. Good telescope views of Saturn will now have to wait late fall or winter (in the morning sky). If you look even lower to the horizon and to the right of Saturn, you may be able to spot Mercury. Binoculars help.

Fortunately, mighty Jupiter is here to take Saturn's place as the highlight of the night sky. Rising in the East just after sunset, the largest planet in our solar system presents a great target for telescopes all night long. Even small telescopes can see color bands in the cloud tops and the four Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. You can spot these four moons in a good pair of binoculars if you can hold them steady enough. Larger telescopes in good viewing conditions can reveal the Great Red Spot, a hurricane like storm three times the size of Earth. If you have a telescope and look in the next couple of weeks, you may be able to see the new dark spot created when a yet unidentified object slammed into Jupiter recently.

If you have, or can get to a dark sky on a clear night, the summer Milky Way is a beautiful sight, arching from the South in Scorpius and Sagittarius across the sky to Cassiopeia and Perseus in the North. About midway it passes through Cygnus, which is directly overhead around midnight.

If you get up early, you can easily find Mars and Venus in the West before sunrise. Venus is the very bright "star" in the East. A little above Venus there are two fairly bright reddish colored objects. The lower of the two is Mars, and the other one which is slightly higher and to the right is Aldebaran, the right eye of Taurus the bull.

Enough for now. Get out and look up!

Steve