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Welcome again to our monthly newsletter with features on exciting celestial events, product reviews, tips & tricks, and a monthly sky calendar. We hope you enjoy it!

• Sensational Summer Sights!
  Summer offers a wealth of sky sights—here are a handful of easy targets.
     
• Appointment with Venus
  At 9 p.m. EDT on July 1, Venus and Saturn will be in conjunction with each other, less than a degree apart. You’ll be able to see two planets in the same telescope field of view!
     
• Shooting the Moon
  Like a trip to the Louvre, the moon at high power will offer more than you can see in one visit.
     
• Imaginova® (Orion®) Interviewed at the NorthEast Astronomy Forum (NEAF)
  Video from a recent Astronomy Expo in Suffern, New York.
     
• Constellation in Focus: Coma Berenices
  A deep-sky treasure chest.
     
• Astrophoto of the Month
  Phillip Holmes' Horse Head Nebula.

Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned "pro," summer offers a wealth of sky sights. Here are just a handful of easy targets, but be sure to check out your copy of Starry Night® and stayed tuned here on Space.com for more suggestions as the summer sails by.

The early evening offers three easy planets. Venus continues to dominate the western sky, with Saturn nearby in Leo. On June 18, the Crescent Moon, Saturn and Venus make a wonderful sight in the western twilight, a great target for binoculars such as Orion's Resolux WP 7x50s.

If you miss it, there is a similar grouping on July 16. To the southeast, Jupiter is a standout near Antares in Scorpius, but you'll need a scope to see the nightly parade of moons. (The Orion ED refractor line is a good choice for Jupiter, Saturn's rings, the Moon and planets in general.) Jupiter just gets better through the Summer, but Venus and Saturn will be gone by August, lost in the glare of the setting Sun.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

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When June begins, Venus and Saturn will be nearly 25° apart, Venus close to Pollux in Gemini and Saturn close to Regulus in Leo. Oven the month of June, we will witness the spectacle as the brilliant Venus swiftly crosses the entire constellation of Cancer until the two meet, close to Regulus, at the beginning of July.

In the Starry Night® image above, we see the paths of the two planets from June 1 to July 1, each dot marking five days along the planets’ paths. Because Saturn is 19 times farther away from us than Venus, 9.94 versus 0.53 astronomical units from Earth, it moves much more slowly against the background stars. Thus Venus appears to catch up with Saturn and pass it on July 1. A particular date to watch is June 18, when the four-day-old crescent Moon will be located right in between Saturn and Venus.

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The moon is the hardest working object in the night sky. Unlike the planets that hide close to the sun for months and wallow in the lowest reaches of the ecliptic for years at a time—the moon is always there for you. It is beautifully positioned for picture taking much of each month. And during those brief times when it lies behind the sun you can always spend some hours at the eyepiece looking for dim fuzzy stuff!

Through a telescope, the moon is more fun than Google Earth. As you zoom in with higher magnification new landscapes are revealed and a limitless supply of features—craters, rimae, domes—are revealed. To capture a detailed close-up of the moon using a long effective focal length you will need a telescope and a mount that tracks the night sky.

A camera capable of capturing streaming video (a webcam or dedicated planetary imaging camera) is relatively inexpensive, simple to set up in the field and perfectly suited for lunar imaging at high power. A basic 640x480 pixel chip is fine. Larger chips will display a wider field of view but will be more expensive and require a fast processor to handle the huge stream of data at 30 or 60 frames per second.

Like a trip to the Louvre, the moon at high power will offer more than you can see in one visit. It pays to plan ahead. Your session will be most rewarding on a night when the seeing is steady. Find a good weather resource (the Clear Sky Clock is a good internet site to bookmark) and learn the patterns at your location. Often you will find windows of good seeing just after sunset and before sunrise. Store your telescope in an unheated location so it will be thermally stable and ready for imaging at short notice.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

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Rich Cambell of Orion Telescopes & Binoculars was interviewed by "News In Space" host Casey Dee at a recent Astronomy Expo in Suffern, New York.

Courtesy AstroShorts.com

Pedro Braganca
Content Director, Starry Night®

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At this time of year, Coma Berenices hangs high overhead, very well-placed for observation. Berenice was an Egyptian queen, the wife of King Ptolemy III Euergestes. When her husband went off to war, to ensure his safe return, she promised her hair to Aphrodite. The King did indeed return and Berenice gave up her hair, a tuft of which became this constellation.

Diadem is a binary star about 47 lightyears from us. It's two suns cannot be split in telescopes but, just a little to the north, M53 hangs in space at a much greater distance: 60,000 lightyears. M53 is a halo cluster, filled with dozens of Mag 13 stars.

M64, The Blackeye Galaxy, gets its famous name from the dark dust lane that cuts through the galaxy's core. With averted vision, you'll just be able to make out the lane. Overall, the galaxy is bright enough to be visible in binoculars.

NGC 4725 is a large bright spiral galaxy which has been warped by its interactions with close-by NGC 4747. This patch of sky also contains the North Galactic Pole.

NGC 4559, a faint spiral galaxy, is inclined 20° from edge-on. The larger your scope the better the view. NGC 4565 is inclined only 4° from edge-on and is breath-taking. Both galaxies belong to the Virgo Cluster.

NGC 4494 is an elliptical galaxy whose core rotates very rapidly—and in the opposite direction to the stars in the outer disk!

Sean O'Dwyer
Starry Night® Times Editor

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Horse Head Nebula
Phillip Holmes took this photo from his backyard in Rockhampton Australia. The photo is taken with a STL-11000M through a Televue NP101mm F5.4 on a G11 mount. Photo has been cropped to show the horse head.

PRIZES AND RULES:

We would like to invite all Starry Night® users to send their quality astronomy photographs to be considered for use in our monthly newsletter.

• Featured submissions (best of month) will receive a prize of $75 USD.

Please read the following guidelines and see the submission e-mail address below.

• Format: Digital images in either JPG, GIF or TIFF format.
• Size: 700 pixels wide maximum.
• File size should be less than 2 MB.
• Include a caption: Your full name, location where photo was taken and any interesting details regarding your photo or how you took it. Please be brief.
• Important notes: We may edit captions for clarity and brevity. We reserve the right to not use submissions. In submitting your image or images to Imaginova®, you agree to allow us to publish them in all media—on the Web or otherwise—now and in the future. We'll credit you, of course. Most important, you'll have the satisfaction of sharing your experience with the world!
• Send images, following the above guidelines, to photo@starrynight.com (by sending an image you agree to the above terms, including Imaginova®’s right to publish your photos). Please do not send .ZIP files as they will not reach us.

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