Moon’s names born of myths

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The most common names for July’s full moon are the Thunder Moon and Hay Moon. Another is the Moon of Blood, said to have originated with the Okanagon who lived around the Columbia River, where mosquitoes are particularly voracious!

Several American Indian tribes referred to it as the full Buck Moon since it is about this time of year that new antlers of buck deer break through velvety fur.

Focus on the planets

Mercury reappears late in July low on the western horizon at dusk. On July 25, Mercury and Jupiter are separated by less than half a degree and appear in the same telescopic field of view.

Venus hovers above the east-northeast horizon about a half- hour before sunrise as July opens. Venus keeps rising closer to sunup during the month and becomes lost in the Sun’s glare as the month comes to an end.

Mars rises in the east shortly after midnight as the month begins but will be visible two hours earlier as July comes to a close. The best time to view martian detail will be in the hours preceding dawn, when the Red Planet is highest in the south.

Jupiter lies to the west among the stars of Leo the Lion at dusk. On the evening of July 2, look for the thin crescent moon directly above Jupiter. A telescope will allow you to watch the interactions of Jupiter’s four major moons as they align themselves with the gas giant.

Saturn keeps close company with Venus on the east-northeast horizon at dawn as July begins but, while Venus gradually disappears in the sun’s glare, Saturn steadily climbs on the horizon rising about two and a half hours before the Sun as July ends. July 26 will mark Saturn’s closest approach to the Sun in nearly 30 years.

Uranus rises around 10 p.m. among the stars of Aquarius to the upper right of Mars where binoculars will reveal it as a distinctly bluish-green disk.

Neptune lies far to the right of Mars among the stars of Capricornus. Neptune is a mind-boggling 2.7 billion miles from Earth and will appear as a faint blue dot in all but the most powerful telescopes.

Pluto is among the stars of Ophichus but will be indistinguishable from a faint star by any but the most sophisticated viewers and equipment.

Our celestial neighborhood

Last March, space got a little too up-close-and-personal for residents of Park Forest, Ill., according to Peter Brown in the July issue of Sky & Telescope. A meteor about the size of a car and weighing between 10 to 25 tons, blew apart with sonic booms heard as far away as Canada. It strew hundreds of meteorites across a large area hitting several homes and cars. One tore through a roof, kitchen floor, and wound up on a table in the basement. Another smashed a window, bounced off the sill, and narrowly missed a sleeping teenager. This is the first known meteorite fragments to have fallen in an urban area.

July events

1 Sunrise, 4:53 a.m.; sunset, 8:25 p.m.

2 The waxing crescent moon is directly above Jupiter in the west at dusk.

4 The Earth is at aphelion, or farthest distance from the sun, today. The Earth is a little more than 3 million miles more distant from the sun than it is at perihelion that occurs on Jan. 4.

7 Moon in first quarter, 10:32 p.m.

8 Look for an extremely close pairing of Venus and Saturn low in the northeastern sky about half an hour before sunrise.

10 Moon at perigee, or closest approach to the Earth, today.

13 Full moon, 3:20 p.m.

17 If you are up and about around 4 a.m., check out the rare sight of Mars just to the northern cusp of the waning gibbous moon.

21 The sun enters Cancer on the ecliptic. Moon in last quarter, 3:02 a.m.

22 Moon at apogee, or farthest distance from Earth, today.

23 The sun enters the astrological sign of Leo but astronomically has just entered Cancer.

29 New moon, 2:52 a.m.

30 Look to the west a half- hour after sunset for a diverse collection of heavenly bodies. Jupiter is to the lower right of the thin crescent moon with Mercury closer, and to the moon’s lower left. The star Regulus is to Mercury’s immediate lower right.

31 Sunrise, 5:19 a.m.; sunset, 8:03 p.m.

Clair Wood taught physics and chemistry for more than a decade at Eastern Maine Technical College in Bangor.