Today:
All night, every night, the North Star is right where it always is – half way up, due north. Many are surprised that the North Star is not the brightest star in the heavens. Rather than its brightness, Polaris’s location directly above the Earth’s North Pole makes this the Pole Star. As the Earth spins on its axis, this star remains fixed in the same place, while the rest of the skies appear to pivot around it.
Wednesday:
With the Summer Solstice but two days hence, you might think that the Sun will come directly overhead. It’s true that the Sun reaches its highest point at our latitude on the Summer Solstice, when it will be just shy of 70 degrees above the southern horizon near 1:00 PM. But to see the Sun directly overhead, you would need to travel south to the line on the globe marked the Tropic of Cancer, the northernmost point at which this happens on the Summer Solstice.
Thursday:
This time around, night owls can catch the Moon rising in the east-southeast at around two o’clock tomorrow morning. On the Moon’s right flank will be Saturn. The two will remain in lockstep as they rise into southeast. The crescent moon will resist the glare of the rising sun for a while, but Saturn will disappear into it at around 4:45 AM.