Mon Jun 15, 2026 HERCULES OVERHEAD
Late this evening, look toward the top of the sky. Up there is an undistinguished star pattern which looks something like a simple letter H. The H stands for Hercules, and while the constellation is not very prominent, the ancient Greek hero it represents was. Nearby constellations represent some of his 12 labors. There’s his first labor, the conquest of the Nemean lion – the constellation Leo, to the west of Hercules; or the second task, the destruction of the Hydra, below Leo. Hyppolyte, the queen of the amazons, whose golden belt was task number 9, is represented by Virgo to the southwest. To the north is Draco the dragon who guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, the three stars in the handle of the Big Dipper. And the great, carnivorous Stymphalian birds are present as the three bright stars of the summer triangle, Vega, Deneb and Altair, over in the eastern sky.
Tue Jun 16, 2026 WILLIAM PARSONS, LEVIATHAN BUILDER
William Parsons was born on June 17th, 1800. Forty years later, he built the Irish Leviathan. At sixteen tons, and with a primary mirror six feet across, the Leviathan would remain the world’s largest telescope for the next seventy years. It was so big that it couldn’t be rotated, so by leaning the instrument east to west, Parsons could observe objects for over a half hour. The Irish Leviathan was so powerful that he could actually see individual stars in distant galaxies like M51, the Whirlpool, roughly 40 million light years away! A lot of the colorful descriptive names of nebulas and galaxies were made up by Parsons – the whirlpool galaxy, the crab nebula, the Saturn nebula. Parson’s son continued his work, but his grandson had no interest in astronomy, and Leviathan was dismantled. But it was rebuilt in 1999.
Wed Jun 17, 2026 NAME THAT CONSTELLATION - JUNE
Can you identify the thirty-first largest constellation? It is bordered on the north by the constellation Lynx the Bobcat, and on the south by Hydra, on the west by the Gemini, and on the east by Leo the Lion. There are no bright stars here, and it is one of the darkest regions in the night sky. Some of its stars have been found to have planets orbiting them and there is a beautiful open star cluster within its borders, known as the Praesepe or Beehive cluster. In mythology this creature was sent by the goddess Hera to attack the hero Hercules. The hero accidentally crushed it during the fight, but Hera restored it to life in the heavens as a constellation. This evening the crescent moon and the planet Venus can be found near its heart, while Jupiter and Mercury are just to the west of them, near the constellation Gemini. Can you name this star figure, the third constellation of the Zodiac? The answer is Cancer the Crab, high in the southwest after sunset.
Thurs June 18, 2026 RIDE, SALLY RIDE
Today’s Skywatch was written by my student assistant, Isabella Gargiulo. On June 18th, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly into space. And at the age of 32, she was also the youngest American to ever go into space. When the space shuttle Challenger reached its orbit around the Earth, Ride operated its robotic arm and deployed a reusable satellite that carried military and scientific payloads to be used in later missions. Two days and twenty years earlier than Sally Ride’s record-breaking accomplishment, another record was broken. Valentina Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut, was the first woman in the world launched into space.
Fri Jun 19, 2026 SUMMER SOLSTICE
Summer begins on Sunday, June 21st, at 4:24 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. It’s at this precise moment that the sun will shine directly overhead at local noon, not here in Florida obviously, but as seen from a point on the Tropic of Cancer at twenty-three and a half degrees North latitude. When it’s local noon here, the sun will be as high in the sky as possible for our latitude. Along this part of the Treasure Coast, we’re at 27½ degrees North latitude, so at midday today the sun will be about 4 degrees south of our zenith. This is the summer solstice, as the sun stops its northerly progression, due to the inclined tilt of the earth’s axis as it revolves about the sun; sol-stice – sun stop. It also marks the longest period of daylight and the shortest period of night in the year, at least in Earth’s northern hemisphere.