Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Friday, June 8th.  Today the sun will be up for 15 hours and 28 minutes, setting at 9:26.   The moon, 3 days before last quarter, will rise at 12:38 tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow the sun will rise at 5:57.

High in the east is the dim and reasonably large constellation of Hercules.  Here is the greatest of the Greek heroes, dim and upside down even, while the comparative nobody Orion gets a great constellation to his name in the winter.  Anyway, Hercules can be spotted by the distinctive keystone shape of stars that mark the old boy’s kilt.  Stars connected to the four corners show his body and limbs.  Check a constellation book for where all the stars lead to.  On the west side of the keystone can be spotted with binoculars a fuzzy star.  Investigations with larger and larger telescopes will reveal  a huge assembly of stars called a globular star cluster.  There’s perhaps a million stars there.  The finest in the northern heavens.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The constellation Hercules and his neighbors. Created with Stellarium.

M92 is also a globular star cluster but more distant.  The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules is also designated M13.