Mon Jul 20, 2026 APOLLO 11 LANDING ANNIVERSARY
On July 20th 1969 at 4:18 pm Eastern Daylight Time, Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, aboard their lunar spacecraft Eagle, touched down on the moon, landing on a basaltic rock lava basin called the Sea of Tranquility. At 10:56 pm, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, followed by Buzz Aldrin about ten minutes later. They were outside for two-and-a-half hours, setting up several lunar science experiments and collecting about fifty pounds of moon rocks. Shortly before 2 pm on July 21st, they blasted off from the moon and rejoined Command module pilot Mike Collins who was on board the Columbia spacecraft in lunar orbit. All three came back to earth on July 24th fifty-seven years ago. The last time anyone walked on the moon was back in 1972; when will we return?
Tue Jul 21, 2026 THE CENTER OF THE MILKY WAY
Today’s Skywatch was written by my student assistant, Isabella Gargiulo. If you look directly south this evening, you’ll see two prominent constellations in our night sky: Sagittarius the Archer and Scorpius the Scorpion. Scorpius is quite easy to spot, look for a fish-hook shape or more appropriately a scorpion's tail. To find Sagittarius, look for a tilted teapot in the sky. Now if you follow the spout of Sagittarius's teapot towards Scorpius, you’ll find a dark area that is home to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. This region is called Sagittarius A, an area of dense radio wave activity caused by a supermassive black hole 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun. Scientists used advanced telescopes to study the movement of matter around Sagittarius A, figuring out its mass vs its size, which is less than a hundred million miles in diameter. Next door to this chaotic center is Sagittarius B, a cloud of gas and dust that work in a heated reaction to form new stars.
Wed Jul 22, 2026 SEASONAL CONSTELLATIONS
We are now several weeks into summer. With the change of seasons also comes a change in the sky and its constellations. The sun has moved from Taurus the Bull into Gemini the Twins, rendering that part of the sky difficult to see. The great constellations of winter, such as Orion the Hunter and Taurus the Bull, can now only be glimpsed just before sunrise, near the eastern horizon. Springtime star patterns such as Leo the Lion or the Big Dipper, which were once at the top of our northern evening sky, have now slipped over into the west, supplanted by Boötes the Shepherd, Hercules the Hero and Virgo the Maiden. And new star groups appear in the east – Libra and Scorpius, and the three bright stars of the Summer Triangle. The sky wheels about us, and the summertime constellations take their places in the heavens above.
Thu Jul 23, 2026 SUMMERTIME MILKY WAY
In the summertime, when the skies are clear and dark, it's possible to see a galaxy on display. This galaxy is called the Milky Way, and it is our home, a giant star city, one of hundreds of billions in the vast emptiness of the universe. From outside our galaxy it appears as a bar-shaped spiral disc or pinwheel, some hundred thousand light years or so across. One light year equals six trillion miles, which means our galaxy is over six hundred thousand trillion miles in diameter - big! There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, and our sun is but one solitary star about two-thirds of the way out from galactic center. Go out tonight and look for the arm of the Milky Way - a faint hazy band of light arching across the sky. In the late evening, around 10 PM, it stretches from due south – the constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius - toward the zenith – the three stars of the summer triangle, and then down to the constellation Cassiopeia in the north.
Fri Jul 24, 2026 ANTARES
Today’s Skywatch was written by planetarium assistant Vela De la Mare. As the daytime sky rolls into night this week, a blazing red-orange star lights up the southern sky. This dazzling glow is found in the center of the constellation Scorpius, which has granted it the nickname “The Heart of the Scorpion.” Its formal name is just as interesting, known to astronomers as Antares. Ant, as in anti, and Aries, as in Mars. Anti-Mars, or rival of Mars, so named for the amount of times it must’ve have tricked astronomers into thinking it was Mars, due to its deceptively similar color and brightness. Want to know how to tell the difference? Planets shine steady, but stars, like Antares, will twinkle from how far away they are. If it was as close to us as our sun, it would completely engulf Mars, and extend beyond the asteroid belt. A fearsome rival indeed!
