Stargazing 101: Eyes on the Skies

Summer adventurers don’t have to cease their explorations just because the sun goes down. The night sky is full of wonder and changeability, and exploring the heavens is just as rewarding and memorable as a hike or a backcountry bike ride. Happily, a growing number of mobile apps enables all of us to be armchair astronomers.

Campers this summer will be treated to three luminous full moons, but just as critical for sky watchers, there will be three new moons that allow the constellations and meteor showers to sparkle and blaze with intensity since they won’t be obscured or washed out by the bright moonlight.

Just as public-land managers of a previous generation focused on building and maintaining a network of campgrounds, outhouses and other visitation infrastructure, there’s a new focus on ensuring that visitors have unobstructed views of the night sky. That includes designating areas where artificial lights are discouraged. These are called Dark Sky Places, and you can easily find some along your summer-travel itinerary by checking the Dark Sky website.

INTO THE NIGHT

You don’t have to get far beyond the light shadow of metropolitan areas to start to see major celestial features like primary stars and planets, but the farther you get from roads, streetlights and strip malls, the more you’ll see. And when you add the elevation of many national parks and national forests and the clear air of the backcountry, viewing the night sky can be such a transcendent experience you may not want to go to sleep.

Use your favorite star-finding app to locate and identify constellations and other heavenly bodies, and have fun making up your own constellations. You’ll probably see a number of individual unblinking lights cruising across the sky. Those are orbiting satellites, reflecting sunlight back to Earth. The mother of all satellites is the Starlink “train,” a cluster of satellites that appear to be linked together in a string shortly after launch. You can consult an app called Satellite Tracker that shows the exact position of every satellite, including Starlink and the International Space Station, and can notify you when one is passing over your location.

But there’s something to be said for identifying celestial bodies without the aid of technology. Gazing upward, finding known constellations and imagining new ones is an ancient pastime that connects modern humans with our ancestors, and it’s a great way to build family memories on a summer camping trip. Here is a month-by-month outlook for what’s happening in the night sky this summer in the Northern Hemisphere. If you’re looking for old friends like Orion, Scorpius, or even the Pleiades cluster, better known as the Seven Sisters, you’re out of luck. The first two are deep in the Southern Hemisphere in our summer, and the Pleiades are so close to the sun that they’re hard to see except for a few minutes before sunrise.

PLANET TRACKING

We’ll have a couple excellent opportunities to view both Venus and Mercury this summer. Venus will be at its greatest western elongation, meaning the highest point above the horizon, right around Memorial Day. Look for the bright planet in the eastern sky before sunrise.

Mercury will be highly visible over the Independence Day holiday. The planet is at its greatest eastern elongation on July 4. Look for it low in the western sky just after sunset. It’s a great target to find before the stars are fully visible.

This summer’s full moons fall on June 11 (the Strawberry Moon), July 10 (Buck Moon) and August 9 (Grain or Green Corn Moon). Full moons, as we’ve noted, can wash out starlight, but watching a plump, apricot-colored full moon clear the horizon is such an awe-inspiring sight, it’s smart to find a campsite with an unobstructed view of the east.

At the full moon closest to the spring equinox, it rises close to due east and sets close to due west. Full moons close to the summer solstice (both the June and July full moons this year) will rise in the southeast. If you aren’t sure where the moon will rise, watch the sun set, then turn around 180 degrees and you’ll find the full moon rising in the opposite sky.

FAVORITE CONSTELLATIONS

Everyone’s go-to constellation is the Big Dipper, also called Ursa Major (Big Bear), which will appear low in the northwest sky this summer, its bowl facing the ground. It’s fun to recognize on its own, but it’s also a good guide to finding other stars and constellations.

You can easily find the bright star Arcturus by remembering the cue “arc to Arcturus,” and follow the arc of the Big Dipper’s handle to the star, which will be setting in the western sky.

You can use a trio of especially bright stars to conjure what’s called the Summer Triangle, which uses the constellations Altair, Deneb and Vega for its points. The bright stars are Aquila, Cygnus and Lyra.

Then there’s the wild smudge of indistinct stars smeared across the very center of the night sky. It’s our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and the best way to view its dazzling depth and infinitude is to gaze at it through binoculars. During the week on either side of a new moon, when the waning or ebbing moon will still be small, use your binocular to follow the Milky Way down toward the southern horizon. It’s here, where the Milky Way is its brightest and laced with dark dust clouds, that you can see into the center of our own galaxy. It’s a good opportunity to contemplate how tiny our world is in the great ocean of the cosmos, and to reconsider all your trivial preoccupations, including the ripped zipper on your tent and why you were so rude to your sister earlier in the day.

PLAN AROUND METEOR SHOWERS

When you grow weary of finding stars and making up new constellations, sit back and wait for the stars to come to you. These are shooting stars, or meteors, and this summer campers have a few choice opportunities to see dozens of meteors on a good night.

The annual Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower will hit its peak on July 28 and 29—it will build for the preceding week and wane the following week—when viewers can see about 20 meteors per hour.

The biggie, the Perseids Meteor Shower, will get going the following month, peaking Aug. 12 and 13 this year. At the height of the shower, you can see up to 60 meteors per hour. The timing isn’t great, as the waning gibbous moon will block all but the brightest meteors, but seeing a handful of these streaking, impossibly fast shooting stars will keep your eyes peeled for the next one.

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