Today:
High in the east-northeast is the star Deneb, the tail of Cygnus, the Swan. Deneb is Arabic for “the tail”, though Arabs described this region as the “chicken”. While Deneb is less bright than the other members of the Summer Triangle – Vega overhead, and Altair much lower toward the south – it is actually thousands of times brighter, but farther away.
Saturday:
On this day in 1969, millions of people on the Earth watched as one man, Neil Armstrong, became the first person to visit the Moon, the first of six successful missions to the Moon. You’ll see the Moon this evening as a slender Crescent, low in the west-northwest, with our future mission target to its left, the planet Mars.
Sunday:
Tonight welcomes July’s full “Buck Moon.” Being just a month past the summer solstice, the Full Moon will arc low as it travels across the southern sky. In this way the Moon behavior is opposite that of the sun, with moon traveling low across the sky in the summer, and high during the winter.