- July 1st- Today is Canada Day
- Mars 4-degree below Moon this morning
- July 2nd – Uranus 4-degrees below Moon this morning
- July 3rd – Jupiter 5-degrees below Moon this morning
- July 4th – is Independence Day in the USA and the 970th anniversary of the Crab Supernova Explosion
- July 4th is also New Moon
- July 5th – Earth is at Aphelion
- July 6th – Ceres at Opposition Mag. 7.3
Ceres is a dwarf planet in the middle main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. First asteroid, discovered on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi in Sicily, and first thought to be a new planet. Ceres was later classified as an asteroid and then a dwarf planet, the only one inside Neptune’s orbit. Ceres is a dwarf planet in the middle main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
At magnitude 7.3 you will need to be under extremely dark skies to see naked eye. We learned most of what we know about Ceres when it was visited by the Dawn spacecraft in 2015.
Dawn found Ceres’s surface was a mix of water ice and hydrated minerals such as carbonates and clay. Gravity data suggest Ceres to be partially differentiated into a muddy (ice-rock) mantle/core and a less dense but stronger crust that is at most thirty percent ice by volume. Although Ceres likely lacks an internal ocean of liquid water, brines still flow through the outer mantle and reach the surface, allowing cryovolcanoes such as Ahuna Mons to form roughly every fifty million years. This makes Ceres the closest known cryo volcanically active body to the Sun. Additionally, Ceres hosts an extremely tenuous and transient atmosphere of water vapour, vented from localised sources on its surface.
- July 7th Mercury 3-degrees below the Moon this evening
- Spot Arcturus with the unaided eye this week
- July 13th – first Quarter Moon
- July 14th – Lunar Straight Wall visible this evening
- July 15th – Mars 0.6 degrees below Uranus this morning
- July 16th – Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter 30 years ago!
- July 21st – Full Moon
- Asteroid 40 Harmonia at Opposition, Mag. 9.4
Harmonia was discovered by German-French astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt on March 31, 1856, and named after Harmonia, the Greek goddess of harmony. The name was chosen to mark the end of the Crimean War.
Harmonia is a large main-belt asteroid orbiting the Sun with a period of 3.4 years and is an S-type (silicate) similar to achondrite meteorites.
- July 22nd- Mercury at greatest Elongation this evening at 27-degrees from the Sun
- Jupiter appears in the morning sky around 230 am PDT with only 1 Satellite Callisto Visible.
- July 27th Last Quarter Moon
- July 29th – Uranus 4-degrees below Moon this morning.
- July 30th – Mars 5- degrees below the Moon this morning
- July 31st – ZHR=25 best seen in predawn hours today and tomorrow.
Comets –
13P Olbers is up in Lynx at Mag. 7
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan- ATLAS) at Mag. 8 is on Leo Sextans Boarder but moving around and may brighten.
Shane and Listeners THIS COMET IS LISTED WITH A PREDICTED MAG> VALUE OF 2nd for Sept and Oct.!!!!!!
The Actual Astronomy Podcast 