Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, July 5th.  Today the sun will be up for 15 hours and 26 minutes, setting at 9:30.   The moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 10:37 this evening.  Tomorrow the sun will rise at 6:04.

Now that summer is here, the asterism or informal constellation called the Summer Triangle can be seen high in the east as it gets dark.  Highest of the three bright stars is Vega in the constellation Lyra the harp, whose body is seen in a narrow parallelogram nearby.  The second star of the triangle is Deneb lower and left of Vega, It appears dimmer than Vega because its is by far the most distant of the three.  The third star of the Summer Triangle is seen farther below and right of Vega.  It is Altair in Aquila the eagle, and the closest.  Altair is 16.7 light years away, Vega is 25 light years while Deneb may be a whopping 1,550 light years away.   [One light year is 6 about trillion miles.  That’s 6 with 12 zeros after it.]

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.  Bracketed text was omitted from the broadcast due to time constraints.

Addendum

The Summer Triangle July 5, 2012 at 11 p.m. Created using Stellarium and The Gimp.