 Welcome to the skies of a long month. I'm Steph the star of red John Ensworth for Longmont Public Media in the Cherrywood Observatory July 2020 in the news Comets. Yep. This is a repeat from last month. No, we had Comets long and Comet Atlas Both we were hoping we'll put on a nice show. They did not they pretty much fizzled out one broke up But we have new comets. We have Comet neowise Neowise is Drive from NASA's near earth object wide field infrared survey Explorer. That is a mouthful This comet will be closest to the Sun on July 3rd, then be heading out north of the plane of the solar system in the morning sky July 7th, it'll appear not too far from where the Sun will come up and then skirt the horizon Hitting ever further northward, but never getting too far out of the glare in the morning But if you have a telescope, you know where to look this could be a good one putting on a show with a pretty good tail There's early image of it Then we have Comet lemon This is actually named after Mount London Observatory in Arizona. That is its discovery image This comet also probably you put on a good show with a visible tail and binoculars or telescope We'll be heading northward as well But in the evening sky after sunset Going between Leo and Virgo here Taking a look at the horizon over the month. It'll be tracking Deeper into the nighttime sky. It'll be better later in July. It'll be better in August So something look forward to this could be a fun one to look at with binoculars or maybe even catch naked eye We'll see what it does astronomers and astrophysicists have officially declared that black holes do Have a light ring around them if there's material falling in heating up you get an accretion disc around the black hole The way gravity bends space and time you get an image of the disc from the backside Bent around to you appearing to be above and the underside of that disc bent around towards you below This was modeled and it showed up in the movie Interstellar first visualized it took a lot of computational time to solve Einstein's general relativity equations for this and we got the image of M87s black hole region We see what's very similar They have colored it red also But it is a ring like a darker shadow in the center the orientation of the black hole in M87 is almost face ounce. We're almost looking down from above There's a jet of material shooting out. Otherwise, you would see that horizontal belt In front of the black hole, but confirmation that the physics that Einstein figured out and then has been further investigated since This is a strange one Long achromatic mean the colors don't change flair from a black hole merger was seen we have gravitational Detectors looking for such violent things shaking space time when they collide An unconfirmed event with that big long name there seen at the LIGO and Virgo Gravitational observatories since their 21st event that they've investigated Starmers looked for an accompanying light source with that and found it in an active galaxy with this big long name Active galactic nuclei are ones with black holes in the center Gobbling up stars and gas and dust and they have very violent Jets of material shooting out They think occurred in this case is to black holes that were roughly stellar size Orbiting in the dust disc of the galactic black hole in the background here merged They got a new velocity as a single combined object and spent about a month shooting out of the Gas and dust plowing through it making a Tremendous amount of light and mean being able to be seen from a very distant galaxy There's other possible explanations for the phenomena, but this is what seems to match all the data points one All right, let's move on to big star parties And the big star parties are still having a rough time getting going The Nebraska star party hung on for a couple months and finally has been cancelled Alcon Albuquerque Table Mountain in Washington the Oregon star party all cancelled for July as well Often to August and September the Oregon star party still a thing almost heaven summer star party merit star quest main star party We're all cancelled the northern nights star festival in Palo Sede, New Mexico in August 18 24 is still on The Becca and wood Buffalo dark sky festival in the Northwest territories of Canada They go way up there Fort Smith is considering having a smaller Festival so check out their website for details if you can travel that far away and The okie tech star party the next one that's big and close to Colorado is in Kent, Oklahoma at the very end of the Panhandle September 11th and 19th is still on they will make the call By August 11th as to whether that one will remain. It's being watched Check out skyintelscope.org Under astronomy news. They have an up list frequently updated Keeping track of the star party status our astronomy 101 lesson for this month is apheleon the orbit of the earth and all the planets and Moons around planets are never perfect circles Apheleon is the point in the ellipse farthest from the Sun Parahelium is the closest This is extremely exaggerated. This is not how our planetary orbit looks in fact This is more accurate. It looks like a really good circle to me but the difference between apheleon and Parahelium is about three point one million miles So yes, the earth is closer and further from the Sun by over three million miles every six months What you may not have known We'll probably get into this more in the future. We'll do a astronomy 101 of what the seasons are Is that we are farthest from the Sun around July 5th? It's actually July 4th this year And we are closest to the Sun around January 4th. It is very hot outside We're gonna see hundred degree temperatures out on the planes But we are farthest from the Sun at the beginning of July the distance from the Sun is not responsible for the seasons We'll get into what that is Looking above your backyard I'm moving this month The night after whatever fireworks occur July 5th, we have a full moon It will be pretty out there that this weekend by 13th of the last quarter in the morning sky July 20th is the new moon and at the very end of July the first quarter moon We'll be back in the evening sky Taking a look at the planets Things are finally starting to shift across the sky as we circle the Sun We are catching up with the outer planets the orbit slower than we do We have a much larger orbits to circle as well Right after sunset in the early part of the month. There really isn't anything visible yet But Jupiter and Saturn will be up almost the entire night starting mid-month So Jupiter will be up rising as the Sun sets July 14th Saturn will be doing the same July 20th On either side of midnight, you have Jupiter and Saturn there all night long Mars rises around midnight is up for the rest of the evening Neptune which both Neptune and Uranus require at least binoculars a small telescope to know that you've seen them But Neptune rises an hour before Mars Uranus about an hour later Taking a look at how the planets line up in the morning sky here's mid-month at about 1 a.m You'll see south is over here on the right side of the image. There's Jupiter and Saturn Low in the southeastern sky would be Neptune Low in the East is Mars and just coming up at 1 a.m. Is Uranus This red line is the plane of the solar system kind of a flat disk that all the planets are rolling around Like baby's on a plate around the Sun or blue long here is the Earth's equator up in the sky In the pre dawn sky, you'll see Jupiter and Saturn way down in the southwestern sky getting ready to set as the Sun rises And then southern sky you'll have Neptune in the southeastern sky you'll have Mars and Uranus Here's Mars in the southeastern sky 5 a.m. In the middle of the month There's Uranus Oh, here comes Venus Venus will be in the morning sky getting higher and higher each night as the month goes on But if you get out early, you'll see a very bright planet over there Mercury will be entering the morning sky by the end of the month in the morning dawn glow Here's Venus, low in the north of the east 5 a.m. At the very end of July, here's Mercury just coming out of the glow The Sun this month July 1st summarizes at 535 by the end of the month. It's already drifted to 558 We're starting to lose our daylight Sunset 833 backs up to 814 p.m. By the end of the month The day goes from 14 hours 67 minutes in length to 14 hours 17 minutes 40 minutes of daylight in July and the altitude of the Sun at Local noon will drop from 72 degrees to 67 degrees so still very high July 4th as I said earlier is the Apeleum our greatest distance from the Sun and that Specifically occurs at 535 a.m. Our future object this month Will be Jupiter itself It's the king of the planets. It's the brightest planet in the sky throughout most of the night for most of the month You get a pair of binoculars out and look at jubilee. You'll see probably a very bright planet face itself And then you'll see these four dots being the Galilean moons the four big moons The enemy is larger than the planet Mercury It's more telescope. You'll probably get to see the equatorial bands. You might see the great red spot in a telescope The view is flipped upside down a great red spot is in the southern hemisphere equatorial band But it'll be up on top your long month observing the challenge this month. It's to go find a constellation We talked about Sagittarius and the teapot in the previous month, but now Going out now or two after sunset looking into the eastern sky. Let's see Cygnus the swan with the bright star denin We'll track around the other three constellations in the what's called the summer triangle With the summer triangle together throughout these summer month shows So here's going out about nine o'clock just one o'clock at night looking east northeast. Let's see the short stubby body of The swan the long skinny neck The star at the back end of the swan is called Dennett, which means back end of the man Back end of Leo the lion is Dennett borrow. There's one wing going over here one wing going over here This is also known as the northern cross you've heard of the southern cross This is a much larger cross than that not quite as bright maybe but you got the top of the cost cost and bottom of the cost point over like that Looking at the more fanciful pictures the swan is like this these are other constellation depictions artistic renderings Take on a look at astronomy events near longmont. Well, a few things are available July 16th the Longmont Astronomical Society at 6 30 p.m Pluto's planetary status by Hal Levinson will be done via zoom check out longmontastro.org for that So I 25th would have been the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Star Party and Rabbit Mountain Take a look at longmontastro.org for that it would have been at nine o'clock Of course, it is canceled still not doing group gatherings quite yet Little Thompson Observatory and it's third Friday of the month public nights are canceled through September Take a look for updates Star kids org to go into the fall that's this Park Memorial Observatory is Remaining closed to the end of July and Joseph or that org for that Other than Colorado Astronomical Society will have Bill Suni It looked like on their site. The title was otherwise. I'm guessing that's a typo, but Give you the warning but looks like they're he's talking about in our galaxy app. I'll be interested I'll be via webcast at no co astro.org So I second 2026 15. I'm sure I got it I'm gonna add a new segment right here at the end giving you things to read maybe apps to use Sky and tell Scott at Sky and tell Scott org is a Fantastic slightly more technical astronomy magazine. They have online version as well Astronomy magazine at astronomy.com is more general audience focused and they also Have a e-subscription as well as a delivered magazine And I really like space weather at space weather calm You can keep an eye on the Sun And Aurora and other notable things like comets in the sky up to the minute Information it's space Next month, we will get into your favorite apps. I'm an iPhone iPad person Well, I'll be biased towards that I can't verify that all the apps will talk about next month. I'm also an Android but Pretty much You have any additions or corrections contact me Janans with a gmail.com This has been the skies of a long month in July 2020 keep looking up