{"id":3579,"date":"2025-06-27T21:26:21","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T21:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3579"},"modified":"2025-06-27T21:29:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T21:29:15","slug":"astrocal-july-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3579","title":{"rendered":"AstroCal – July 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

AstroCal – July 2025<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On the morning of July 1, 2025, <\/span>Venus <\/b>will be shining brightly in the eastern sky in the hour before sunrise.\u00a0 Shining at magnitude -4-4, it will not be hard to find.\u00a0 On July 4, the much dimmer object just 2.4 degrees above Venus will be <\/span>Uranus.\u00a0 Jupiter<\/b> (mag -1.9) will emerge from behind the <\/span>Sun <\/b>at mid-month where it will be found to the lower left of Venus in the constellation of <\/span>Gemini, the Twins.\u00a0 <\/b>These two bright planets will continue to move closer to each other until they are in conjunction in August.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Saturn<\/b> (mag +1.1) will be stationary in the constellation of <\/span>Pisces, the Fish <\/b>on July 14<\/span>.\u00a0 <\/b>After that date, the Ringed Planet begins retrograde motion where it will appear to be moving backwards against the star field.\u00a0 This is an illusion caused when the <\/span>Earth<\/b>, in its inner orbit closer to the Sun, passes Saturn which orbits much farther away from the inner Solar System.\u00a0 Saturn will continue in retrograde motion for the next four and a half months.\u00a0 Saturn\u2019s rings are tilted 3.5 degrees from edge on and this angle will decrease to 0.4 minutes by November 2025.\u00a0 <\/span>Neptune<\/b> will be 1 degree north of Saturn on July 6 but it will require a small telescope to see.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the evening sky, <\/span>Mercury<\/b> will reach its greatest elongation at 26 degrees east of the Sun on July 4 before it fades from view at mid-month.\u00a0 <\/span>Mars<\/b> will move from <\/span>Leo, the Lion<\/b> into <\/span>Virgo, the Virgin<\/b>.\u00a0 Look for it in the western sky in the hour after sunset – its magnitude will be +1.5.\u00a0 The Red Planet will begin the month some 180 million miles from Earth and move farther away to 197 million miles by the end of the month.\u00a0 The increasing distance will cause its angular size to shrink from 4.8 to 4.4 arcseconds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The <\/span>Moon<\/b> will be at apogee (251,400 miles from Earth) on July 4 and at perigee (228,700 miles) on July 20.\u00a0 The waxing phase early in the month will lead to a <\/span>Full Moon<\/b> on July 10, followed by the <\/span>Last Quarter Moon<\/b> on July17, and the <\/span>New Moon <\/b>on July 24.\u00a0 Look for the <\/span>Old Crescent Moon <\/b>in the east just left of Jupiter on the morning of July 23.\u00a0 The <\/span>Young Crescent Moon<\/b> will then appear in the west in the hour after sunset starting on July 25 and 26.\u00a0 On July 20, the Moon will pass through the stars of the <\/span>Pleiades Star Cluster <\/b>in <\/span>Taurus, the Bull.<\/b>\u00a0 The Pleiades cluster is three times the diameter of the Moon so it will fit in the grouping and not completely cover it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The \u2018broad peak\u2019 of the <\/span>South Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower<\/b> will occur on July 29-30.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our observing challenge for this month is to see how many of the five planets you can see on July 31.\u00a0 They will span 89 degrees of the sky and in order (from the ENE to the south) will be\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn.\u00a0 The only planets not visible at this time will be Mercury (which will be at inferior conjunction) and Mars (which will still be too low to the horizon to see).\u00a0 You can also look forward to seeing a close pairing of Venus and Jupiter next month on August 12 (just 0.9 degrees apart) and the re-emergence of Mercury to their lower left.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Our historical astronomical event for this month is July 4th which marks the 157th birthday of Henrietta Swan Leavitt.\u00a0 Born in Lancaster, Massachusetts in1868, she was educated in Cambridge and later enrolled in Oberlin College after her family moved to Ohio.\u00a0 She later attended the Harvard-affiliated Society for the\u00a0 Collegiate Instruction of Women which would later become Radcliffe College.\u00a0 It was at the Society that an astronomy course got her interested in the discipline.\u00a0 Edward Pickering invited Leavitt to join the permanent staff of the Harvard College Observatory in 1902.\u00a0 The 80 women Pickering hired to do calculations and data analysis (they were called \u2018computers\u2019and included another soon to be famous astronomer, Annie Jump Cannon) were paid $0.25 per hour for their work.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Leavitt\u2019s field of expertise led her to discover 1,777 variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds.\u00a0 Her work would be instrumental to Harlow Shapely\u2019s argument that the Sun lies in the outskirts, and not in the center, of the Milky Way Galaxy.\u00a0 Her discoveries also allowed Edwin Hubble to declare with certainty that our galaxy was not the only one in the universe.\u00a0 I shudder to think that today, there is a movement to deny Harvard University’s pioneering inclusion of scholars of every background.\u00a0 Had Henrietta Swan Leavitt been working for the military, would her legacy of achievements now be erased as if they never happened?\u00a0 Happy 157th birthday, Miss Leavitt.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Information about Henrietta Swam Leavitt provided by Teresa Wilson of the United States Naval Observatory and originally appeared in the <\/span>AAS Historical Astronomy Division\u2019s <\/span><\/i>publication in July of 2018.\u00a0 <\/span>Wilson is a graduate of Michigan Technological University).<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Compiled by Ken Raisanen of WOAS-FM 91.5 – information provided by <\/span>Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar<\/span><\/i>, Michigan State University.\u00a0 More information and subscription information can be found on their website at <\/span>http:\/\/abramsplanetarium.org\/<\/span><\/a>skycalendar\/<\/span>.\u00a0 Yearly subscriptions cost $12 and can be started anytime. Comments and questions can be emailed to kraisanen@oasd.k12.mi.us<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Okay, so VENUS seems to be a ‘go-to’ astronomy video – Shocking Blue was formed in the late 1960s and this clip showed they were still performing in 19998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AstroCal – July 2025   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On the morning of July 1, 2025, Venus will be shining brightly in the eastern sky in the hour before sunrise.\u00a0 Shining at magnitude -4-4, it will not be hard to find.\u00a0 On July 4, the much dimmer object just 2.4 degrees above Venus will be Uranus.\u00a0 Jupiter (mag -1.9) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3579"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3582,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579\/revisions\/3582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}