Reach for the stars — and other heavenly bodies

Dark Summer Skies Make The Methow Ideal For Gazing

BY DAVID WARD

Summer is probably the favorite time of the year for stargazing. The warmer nights are certainly a big plus since you do not have to dress up like a polar bear. Not that summer does not have its down sides. Mosquitoes and nights that do not get dark until way past your bedtime can definitely be a deterrent, but the night sky has a lot of attractions this season that you do not want to miss. Here are a few that I recommend.

■ N ORTHERN LIGHTS

After snoozing for decades our sun is waking up and flexing his muscles. Hordes of charged particles are being blasted at us at millions of miles per hour. Hitting the magnetic field and atmosphere of the earth, they produce brilliant displays of color dancing across the northern night sky. Space Weather Live.com is one of many websites that predict when to watch for the Aurora Borealis. It has been decades since auroral displays have been observed as far south as Washington state. For best viewing get to somewhere you can see low into the north.

■ TH E MILKY WAY

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P Erseid Meteor Shower

Sometimes known as the “Old Faithful “ of meteor showers, it never fails to delight young and old stargazers. This year’s show, which is visible from Aug. 11-13, will not be in competition with a bright moon. Look for the meteors after midnight and before dawn. Visible anywhere in the sky, if you trace their paths backward they will lead to the constellation Perseus in the northeast. Most astronomical objects are huge beyond our imagination. Meteors, however, we can wrap our heads around. They are about the size of an apple seed.

■ V ENUS

Venus is the brightest planet out there this summer and the brightest object in the sky except for the sun and the moon. She is at her height, literally, this summer as she reaches her greatest eastern elongation on June 4, the farthest from the sun in the sky’s dome. After that she will quickly drop out of the sky towards the west. On Aug. 13 she will pass between us and the sun and reappear in the eastern sky before dawn. If you have a small telescope, the best time to see Venus will be in late July and early August. Then she will appear as a thin, delicate shaped crescent.

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O Ther Planets

Mars is a rather inconspicuous object low in the west during the month of June. Later in the summer, look for him before dawn in the east along with Jupiter and Saturn.

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M Oon

A crescent moon will be in a nice grouping with Venus and Mercury on July 19 and 20. To watch this event you need to be in a place where you can see low into the west just after sunset. A pair of binoculars will help. There are two super moons this summer, both in August on the first and the last nights of the month. The moon will appear to be at its largest because it is closer to us at a point in its orbit called perigee.

■ W EIRD CLOUDS

Have you ever seen a Noctilucent cloud? Summer is the time to spot these rare and mysterious clouds which are not fully understood by scientists. Most clouds hang out in the lower reaches of our atmosphere, but these eerie looking clouds are high up in the mesosphere about 50 miles above us. Microscopic water droplets make their way to the upper reaches of our atmosphere attaching themselves to dust particles f rom space, which gives these clouds a distinctive bluish hue. Look for them in the deep twilight just before it gets completely dark. Not sure if you are seeing the real thing? Compare what you see with pictures online. That is what I do.

Perhaps the grandest sight of all in the heavens above, it is a glimpse of our home in the vast cosmos. And what a big home it is! The laser beam from my pointer traveling at 186,282 miles per second would take over 100,000 years to traverse its girth. It contains hundreds of billions of stars, our sun being one rather insignificant resident. Named for the breast milk of an Ancient Greek goddess, humankind has marveled at the sight of it for millennia, and wondered what it might be. Now we know it is a huge pinwheel of stars, so large that even we, living in the 21st century, can scarcely grasp its scope.

On a dark, moonless night look for a pale glow stretching north to south across the sky. The center of the pinwheel lies in the south in the summer, and overhead you can see one of the spiral arms twisting out from the center.

The light we see has taken about 25,000 years to reach us here on earth starting its journey long before civilization was a happening thing on this little planet.

A great time to look for the Milky Way would be when you are watching for the meteor shower. Have fun out there, and I hope you get to see the night sky in all its glory.