July 2014 night sky guide podcast, transcript and sky chart


Nick guides us through July stars, constellations and a globular cluster, and also includes intriguing facts such as this: if Antares (the star that is the heart of the Scorpion) were in the position of our Sun, it would engulf not only Earth but also Mars. Lucky for us it’s where it is, in Scorpius. Nick’s tour of the stars also refers to some ancient Greek myths that related to the sky.

There is quite a choice of planets you can find this month with Nick’s help, some at night, some early in the morning. To find out when and where to look for Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in the evening and for Mercury and Venus in the morning, listen to the audio, or read the transcript below.

You can subscribe with iTunes or upload the (28 mins) audio to your iPod or mp3 player, or listen to it on your computer.

We provide an embedded sky map (below) and a July 2014 night sky chart as a printable PDF which shows the stars, constellations and planets visible in the night sky from anywhere in Australia. To view PDF star charts you will need to download and install Adobe Acrobat Reader if it’s not on your computer already.

July 2014 night sky chart

Our annual book, ‘The 2014 Australasian sky guide’, by Dr Nick Lomb has more information and star maps for months from December 2013 until December 2014 inclusive, plus information about the Sun, twilight, the Moon and tides, and a host of other fascinating astronomical information. You can purchase it ($16.95) at Sydney Observatory and Powerhouse Museum shops or other good bookshops, or online through Powerhouse Publishing (additional packing/postage costs apply).

READ THE TRANSCRIPT (after the jump)

Transcript of the July 2014 monthly sky guide audio

This is a guide to the night sky in July. My name is Nick Lomb. I’m the former Curator of Astronomy at Sydney Observatory and the Powerhouse Museum. You can find this podcast on the Sydney Observatory website, which is at www.sydneyobservatory.com.au, and look in the astronomy section. If you’d like to become familiar with the night sky, what you need to do is to download the map associated with this podcast. Simply download it in PDF and then print it out and take it outside with you. Of course, being July, it is winter, please dress warmly as it can be fairly cool at night.

What you also need to take with you is a torchlight, ideally with a red light, since red does not destroy your adaptation to the night sky. With a red light, you can look at the map and look up in the night sky. If you do not have a red torch, put a little bit of red cellophane in front of an ordinary white torch. That will give you a red light to be able to look at both the map and the night sky.

It would also help if you’re familiar with the cardinal directions, that is, north, west, south and east. You need to know where they are with respect to your location. East is, of course, where the Sun rises. West is where the Sun sets. With these, you get a fairly good indication of direction. As well, at 12:00 noon, the Sun is approximately due north.

Let us begin our tour of the night sky in July. We’ll start in the east where we can see the familiar sight of the constellation of Scorpius, the Scorpion. This is a welcome sight, visible in the Australian winter. It is a very obvious constellation. It is one of the few really bright and easy to find constellations, and it is an excellent signpost to the night sky.

Scorpius is a long curving line of bright stars. At this time of the year, it’s in the eastern sky with the claws of the scorpion high up and a little bit towards the north. The actual sting, or tail, of the Scorpion is towards the south. In the middle of the Scorpion, we find the red star Antares which represents the heart of the Scorpion. Antares is a huge star.

The name Antares means ‘rival of Mars’. The reason for the name is because Antares is a similar reddish colour to the red planet Mars. Occasionally, Mars passes Antares close by, and the two can be seen close together with a similar reddish colour, and that is a very impressive sight when it happens.

As I said, Antares is a giant star. It is relatively cool with a surface temperature of around 3,000 degrees Celsius. This may sound like a lot. But compared to our own Sun, which has a temperature of around 5,500 degrees Celsius, it is relatively cool. It is that coolness which gives it its red colour. As it is such a huge star, even though it is relatively cool, it still puts out a huge amount of light.

It appears like a bright star in the sky even though it is 600 light years from us. In other words , light has taken 600 years to reach us from the star Antares.

The star Antares is so large that if you replaced our own Sun by it… and I should add that nobody would want that to happen, for the Earth would then be engulfed by Antares, as would the planet Mars and many of the asteroids, which are the rocky object that circle the Sun between the paths of Mars and Jupiter.

Jupiter, the giant planet Jupiter, would be just outside Antares but not very far from it. The solar system would be a very different place, and it would not be a hospitable place for human beings if Antares replaced the Sun.

Antares has a companion star that circles around it. This is a hot star so there is quite a contrast between the two of them. The companion star has a temperature somewhere around 18,000 degrees Celsius and it has a bluish colour. If people look at those two stars together, the ruddy Antares and the blue companion star, they sometimes describe the companion star as green. This seems to be due to some kind of contrast effect in our eyes.

The companion star appears small compared to the huge Antares. In reality, it is larger than our own Sun. It is something like four times wider than our own Sun, and it has a mass of about 10 times that of our own Sun. It is 2,000 times as bright as the Sun. We do not, as yet, know how long the companion star takes to circle around Antares. The current estimate is that it would take something like 1,000 years.

Now let us move to the eastern part of the sky, from Scorpius the Scorpion, to the north. If we face north and look up, the most obvious star that we can see is a star called Arcturus. This star is part of the constellation of Boötes, which is the Herdsman. Arcturus means ‘Bear Watcher’. Arcturus is one of the brightest stars in the sky. It is the fourth brightest star in the sky. It is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere as seen from the Northern Hemisphere. It is a slightly orange coloured star, at a distance of 37 light years from us. It is closer than Antares which, as you recall, is 600 light years away. But just like Antares, it appears like a bright star in the sky.

Arcturus is an interesting star for a variety of reasons. One of them is that it moves around the centre of our own galaxy a little bit slower than our own star, the Sun. Of course, we on Earth move around the centre of our own galaxy together with the Sun. Arcturus is believed to be a somewhat older star than our own Sun. And it likely comes from an older generation of stars in the galaxy.

There has been a suggestion which may or may not be true, but it’s still an intriguing one, that Arcturus does not come from our own galaxy, but comes from a small galaxy that merged with our own one many thousands of millions of years ago. This would explain why Arcturus has a different motion to other stars in this part of the galaxy, as it is moving a little bit more slowly around the centre.

Let us now move to face the west. The most obvious star that we can see is a star called Regulus. Regulus is towards the west and a little bit towards the right and somewhat towards the north. That is, it is in the north-west. The name Regulus means ‘Little King’. It is 77 light years away. Intrinsically, it gives off something like 100 times as much light as our own Sun. It is a fairly hot star, 12,000 degrees Celsius. This compares, if you recall, with our own Sun, which has a temperature of about 5,500 degrees.

Regulus is a star right on the ecliptic, right on the paths of the planets and the Sun and the Moon as they move along the sky. Consequently, Regulus can be occulted, or covered by the Moon and that is an event that is fairly common. Regulus also has a companion star that is circling around it. It is a fairly low mass star which is a long way away from Regulus.

This companion star is roughly 4,000 times as far away from Regulus as the Earth is from the Sun. This large distance means that the companion star circles around the main star of Regulus very slowly. It is believed that it would take at least 100,000 years for the companion star of Regulus to circle around it.

Unfortunately, none of us are going to be around to see that complete circuit finished, but people in a distant future will be working out the exact period. For the moment, all we can do is make an estimate that it takes somewhere around 100,000 years. Interestingly, this companion star, the little companion star that circles around Regulus is also a double star. The two stars that make up the companion take around 1,000 years to circle around each other.

Let us now move to the southern part of the sky. If you face south and look up, you can see in the early evening the Southern Cross. This is the best time to look at the Southern Cross, the most famous group of stars in the Southern Hemisphere. It is the best time to view because it’s very high up in the sky, and it’s sort of standing vertically due south at this time of the year, in the early evening.

If we look at the Southern Cross, we can easily see four stars. There’s also a fifth star, which sadly is becoming lost to light pollution in our cities. If you’re looking at the Southern Cross from a dark sky, from a country spot for example, the fifth star is nice and prominent. However, if you look at or for this fifth star from a suburb of a major city, whether it’s Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide or Perth, the fifth star in the Southern Cross is getting harder to see.

The bottom star of the Southern Cross, at least at this time of the year, is a star that we call Acrux, or alternatively, Alpha Crucis. This is the brightest star of the Southern Cross. If you look at Acrux through a small telescope, you can see that it’s actually a double star, or two stars. There is in fact a third star nearby as well. The three stars together are about 320 light years from us. Or, in other words, the light that we can see today left Acrux 320 years ago.

Going clockwise and looking at the Southern Cross, the star on the left of the cross is a star called Beta Crucis, which also has a proper name, Mimosa. This is the second brightest star of the Southern Cross. Mimosa is a fairly hot star at a distance of 350 light years from us. It’s important to note that the stars that appear close together in the sky, such as the stars of the Southern Cross, are not necessarily close together in reality.

The stars in the Southern Cross are a very good example. The stars are dispersed three dimensionally in the sky or, in other words, they are at different distances. From our own position, they make up the Southern Cross, they look like a cross. From anywhere else in our own galaxy, the stars will not appear like the Southern Cross. They’ll take up a completely different shape. It’s just from our own viewpoint, that they take up this particularly interesting configuration.

Going on, looking at the Southern Cross and going clockwise, we have looked at Acrux and Beta Crucis or Mimosa. Now at the top of the cross there’s a star called Gamma Crucis. This is a relatively cool star so it is an orange colour. Unfortunately, our eyes are not sensitive to colour in the dark, so we do not normally pick up the colour with our unaided eyes. But if you colour photograph the Southern Cross then it’s quite obvious that Gamma Crucis has an orange colour. Its distance is 88 light years. So it is fairly close to us. It is the closest star of the five main stars of the Southern Cross.

Going further clockwise, around the Southern Cross, the star on the right is Delta Crucis. It’s a hot star that is 364 light years from us. Below Delta, between Delta and Acrux, we find the faintest star in the Southern Cross, Epsilon. From a city, as we discussed earlier, we may not be able to see Epsilon. Possibly, if you really know where it is, you might be just able to glimpse it. But it can be very hard because of light pollution. With a pair of binoculars, however, it is easy to find. Epsilon is, again, an orange-coloured star like Gamma Crucis. And it is at a distance of about 230 light years from us.

Surrounding the Southern Cross, we find the constellation of Centaurus the Centaur. That constellation surrounds the Southern Cross on three sides, to the east, that is to the left, above to the north, and to the right or the west. Centaurus, or the Centaur, represents a Greek legend of half-horse half-human creatures called centaurs.

These creatures were very warlike and very quarrelsome. Surprisingly, though, this particular centaur in the sky, next to the Southern Cross, is not like the rest of them. It represents a centaur known as Chiron who was known for his wisdom and his kindness. He was a teacher, and he taught the Greek heroes of antiquity, Jason and Hercules. He taught them subjects like music, poetry and mathematics.

As a reward, he was placed by the king of the Greek gods, the gods of Greek mythology, Zeus, among the stars. Originally, the Southern Cross in Greek times was just part of the Centaur and represented the hind legs of the Centaur.

The two main stars of Centaurus are the two Pointer stars. The Pointer stars, which always point to the Southern Cross, are the ones which enable us to find and distinguish the Southern Cross from other nearby stars. You can always recognise the Southern Cross by these two Pointer stars. Out of the two Pointer stars, the one furthest away from the Cross in the sky is Alpha Centauri, also known by its Arabic name ‘Rigel Kentaurus’, which means ‘the Centaur’s foot’.

If you look at Alpha Centauri through a telescope, you can see that it’s a double star, that is, two stars really close together in the sky. In fact, they’re among the nicest objects to look at through a telescope. To me, the two stars appear like a pair of distant car headlights. These two stars circle around each other in about 80 years. They were furthest apart in 1995, and since then they’ve been coming closer together. The brighter of the two stars is very similar to our own Sun, while the fainter star is a somewhat orange-coloured star. It’s a little bit less massive than our own Sun, a little bit cooler, but is a slightly larger star than our Sun.

There is a third star in the system which is known by astronomers as Proxima Centauri. We cannot see Proxima, even through a small telescope as it is a long way out of the field of view. It’s two degrees away from the other two stars. The two degrees represents four times the width of the full Moon, so it’s normally outside the field of view of a telescope. But there’s another reason we cannot see it: it is very faint. It’s a little dwarf star. It gives off about 1/10,000th as much light as our own Sun.

The three stars of the Alpha Centauri system are at a distance of about 4.33, or 4 1/3 light years from Earth. That is, light left Alpha Centauri 4 1/3 years ago which is not that long ago, certainly within our own memory. We can all recall what we were doing four-and-a-third years ago. This makes the three stars of the Alpha Centauri system the closest star system to Earth. But remember that Proxima is just a little bit closer than the other two. So Proxima is, in fact, the closest star to us after our own Sun. This star was only discovered relatively recently. It was discovered in 1915 by an astronomer called Robert Innes. Robert Innes was an ex Sydney astronomer who moved to South Africa and became a professional astronomer. While there, he made the discovery.

The other star of the two Pointers is Beta Centauri. That is the one that appears close to the Cross in the sky but is, in fact, much further away from our own Sun. It is 525 light years away, once again, demonstrating that two stars that appear close together in the sky can be a very large distance apart in reality.

Beta Centauri is a very hot massive star giving off something like 10,000 times as much light as our own Sun. Through a telescope, you can see that it is a double star. There is a faint star associated with the main primary star. This faint star is still 400 times as bright as our own Sun.

Finally, before we wrap up this view of the stars in July, I’ll mention another object in the constellation of Centaurus, an object called Omega Centauri that is known affectionately to astronomers as Omega Cen. This is a globular cluster, a huge ball of several million stars. It is believed to contain five to 10 million stars. This ball of stars circles independently around the centre of our own galaxy. It is the most massive out of the 160 or so globular clusters of similar balls of stars, that we know about here in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

At a distance of 16,000 light years, it is relatively close to us, at least for a globular cluster. It’s only visible from the Southern Hemisphere, and it’s a very nice object to study. It circles around the centre of our own galaxy in the opposite direction to stars, which suggests that it has a rather interesting history. It has been suggested that it’s a remnant of a small galaxy that was swallowed a few billion years ago by our own galaxy, the Milky Way. It is the remnant of a very central part, or the nucleus of a small galaxy, and we can see it as the globular cluster, Omega Centauri.

Omega Centauri is visible to the naked eye from a dark sky, but from the city, it can still be easily seen if you look at it through a pair of binoculars. Back in 1985, when Halley’s Comet was nearing the Earth, and before it reached its closest approach to the Earth the following year, it passed right by Omega Cen. The comet looked exactly like Omega Cen, and a lot of people at the time saw the two of them in their binoculars and thought that Halley’s Comet had split into two. But no, it did not.

This is the July 2014 special events in the sky – what the planets are doing, both in the evening sky and in the morning sky for this month.

One of the highlights for this month is on 4th July 2014 when the Earth is furthest from the Sun and that takes place on Friday 4th July, and the actual specific time is 10.13am. So if you’re feeling cold in early July, well you can blame it on the Earth being furthest from the Sun.

Though actually that does not necessarily cause winter but it certainly does add to it a little bit, the fact that we are a little bit further away from the Sun which gives us the light and heat for everything that happens on Earth.

With the planets in the evening sky just after dusk as it becomes dark, we have three planets visible. We have the planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Certainly we have the three planets visibly at the beginning of the month. The red planet Mars is high in the northern sky.

On 6th July, the gibbous Moon – gibbous being the Moon is between first quarter and full Moon or between full Moon and last quarter. But in this case it’s between first quarter and full Moon. On 6th July the gibbous Moon is to the right or east of the planet Mars.

And then on 14th July, just over a week later, Mars passes less than three Moon-widths from the bright star Spica. Spica being the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo. Less than three moon-widths means one-and-a-half degrees. It’s not quite within the view of a small telescope but certainly within the field of view of a pair of binoculars.

The bright planet Jupiter is very low in the north-west sky. However it disappears into the twilight before the end of the first week of the month. So we cannot see it for a very long time in the evening sky.

The ringed planet Saturn is in the north-east. On 8th July, the gibbous Moon is below and to the right or east of Saturn.

Now we turn to the planets visible in the mornings just before dawn, just before the sky starts becoming brighter with the approaching sunrise.

And in the morning sky we have two planets visible: the planet Mercury and the planet Venus. And this is at the beginning of the month because Mercury is very low in the north-east sky at the beginning of the month – it’s to the right or east of Venus but it disappears in the twilight late in the month.

The bright planet Venus which is, of course, one of the brightest objects in the sky – it’s the second brightest object in the night sky after the Moon. Venus is low in the north-eastern sky and on 25th July, so late in the month we have the very pleasing sight of a thin crescent Moon above and to the right or east of Venus.

Of course only a crescent Moon can pass near Venus because Venus is always near the Sun so that it’s visible in the east before sunrise or in the west before sunset. So Venus is always visible close to the Sun so that the Moon has to be a thin crescent when it passes nearby and when it does it’s always a very spectacular sight, having the two brightest objects in the night sky close to each other.

This completes our view of the night sky in July 2014. If you’d like to know more, this podcast is available each month from the Sydney Observatory website, www.sydneyobservatory.com.au. There are plenty of other posts on the Sydney Observatory blog to make it worthwhile having a look. And there are regular updates on astronomical happenings, what can be visible in the sky, instruments and artefacts associated with astronomy – lots of useful information. So it is worthwhile keeping a regular eye on the Sydney Observatory blog which, I repeat, is www.sydneyobservatory.com.au.

My name is Nick Lomb and this has been the view of the night sky in July 2014.

7 responses to “July 2014 night sky guide podcast, transcript and sky chart

  • Sir , really enjoyed this write-up . it was very informative . u said , omega cen can only be seen from southern hemisphere , which is actually is not right . i live around 20 degree north latitude and i can see it quite easily through a pair of binocular at a attitude of 22 degree with a fairly good view . in fact it can be seen without much difficulty up to 30 degree north latitude .

    thanks !

    • > Hi there Abhishek – Nick is overseas at present. He’ll be able to reply to your comment when he’s back in Australia in a couple of weeks or so. Kind regards, Irma (producer of the monthly sky guides)

    • Hello Abhishek. Thanks for pointing out that some of the features of the southern sky can be seen, low down near the horizon, from low northern hemisphere latitudes. Still they are best seen from the southern hemisphere where they can be high up in the sky.

  • Hi Nick, this is the first time I have read your transcript of the night sky ; I am 74 and have only been into star gazing for a short while and find it very interesting , I have been getting Earth Sky News but most of the info. is about the northern Hemisphere so needless to say I found your transcript very informative , because as you know, the stars keep shifting as the year goes on and it is very hard for new sky watchers to keep up with them .
    I don’t know if you answer these replies , but I have a pair of Bushnell 20×50 not bad but I think I need a bigger opening for star gazing maybe 20×100
    Regards John Hanlon

    • Hello John. Thanks for your comments. I am very much aware that much of the astronomy news that we get in Australia is focused on the northern hemisphere and not the southern. That is why Sydney Observatory has through its media releases, online blogs and other material has always tried to emphasise what is relevant to us in Australia. Your Bushnell 20×50 binoculars sound fine to me as long as you have them on a solid tripod for with a magnification of 20 as it would be impossible to hold them steady by hand. Larger aperture binoculars may give you a brighter image as their exit pupil = diameter/magnification may better match the width of the pupil on your eye when dark adapted. If you can, try it out before purchasing.

    • HI Nick , most of the info about the night sky published world wide are about northern hemisphere sky . as i am from india living around 20 degree north latitude , i can access many southern night sky jewels . does sydney observatory provide info about some good southern binocular deep sky objects ( not too southern) ?

      waiting for your reply .

      • Hello Abhishek. Thanks for your comments. You are quite right that most of the astronomical information available relates to the northern sky. At Sydney Observatory we try to counter this by publishing southern sky information on our blog. However, most of what we publish tends to be for people in large cities with a light polluted sky so that we do not often emphasise deep sky objects.

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