Keeping track of the planetary trio

Well troops, here we are past the Fourth of July and past all the sound, and those flashy, bright sparkly-things, and noise. Now all we can hope to avoid is Nature's fireworks shows -- at least until wheat harvest is over.

We have managed to blow through the first half of the year, so I guess we can say it is all downhill from here.

Kind of bland in the heavens too, there are no major events in the offing, at least until we get to the Perseid Meteor Shower on August 12. However, that does not mean there is nothing to watch, we have our planetary trio of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars to keep track of.

If you have been observing on a regular basis you will have noticed that Mars has resumed its regular eastward motion against the background of the stars. For a while -- right around the time of its opposition -- it appeared to move backwards (astronomers call that retrograde motion).

That is sort of like when you pass another moving car on the highway, although you are both going the same direction, it appears for a while to be moving backwards relative to our line of sight.

The same thing can be said for Saturn, since it has passed opposition, it too is moving westward among the stars and will do so until late September.

In fact, now would be a good time to begin watching Mars and Saturn and marking their location relative to the other stars (especially Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius) for the next two months. By the end of August all three objects will have moved from the triangle they are now into a straight line configuration.

All three are high in the south at about 10:00 pm MDT. Mars is the bright object off to the right in the constellation Libra, and Saturn is almost directly above Antares, the bright heart of Scorpius, the Scorpion.

On July 14, a growing moon will be above and slightly left of Mars, and the next evening will be directly above Saturn.

Let's not forget our other planetary object in the early evening, our old friend Jupiter who will soon exit the evening skies.

Look in the southwest about an hour after local sunset, Jupiter is the brightest object visible in that direction located right under Leo, the Lion. A slender crescent moon will be very near Regulus -- the other bright object in that direction -- on July seventh, and on the next evening the moon is near Jupiter.

Okay, now I promised another double star, and this one will be a surprise, Polaris, yep, the North Star. It is only an optical double, but they look nice in binoculars.

Look north for the Little Dipper, it is hanging handle-down and the bottom star of the handle is Polaris.

SKY WATCH: First quarter moon, Monday, July 4. Since the moon will past new, now is the time to begin looking for that slander crescent about a half-hour to 45-minutes after local sunset. Also a good time to look for Earthshine, the reflection of sunlight off of Earth back onto the moon making the dark side slightly illuminated with a ghostly pale light.

NEXT WEEK: A Cook's Tour of Scorpius, and more astronomical blathering.