Sky & Telescope’s Sky Tour Podcast for July 2026

This month’s episode is sponsored by Celestron, manufacturer of high-quality telescopes and an industry leader in developing exciting optical products with revolutionary technologies.
*****
I’m Kelly Beatty of Sky & Telescope magazine, and tonight we’re going on a tour of the stars and planets that you’ll see overhead during July. First I’ll offer some stargazing tips, then we’ll check dates for the Moon’s phases, keep tabs on Venus in the evening sky, and tour of the stars of summer. So grab your curiosity, and maybe some bug repellent, and come along on this month’s Sky Tour.
*****
Let’s begin with a pop quiz: At this time of year, is Earth closer or farther from the Sun? You might think it’s closer, because of summer’s heat. But don’t forget that it’s winter right now for everyone living south of the equator. Anyway, July 6th is when Earth reaches aphelion, the point in its orbit most distant from the Sun. On that date we’re 1.7% farther away than on average.
OK, let’s get outside and observe the night sky! Y’know, most people think of stargazing as something you have to do with a telescope. Nope, not the case at all. The night sky is beautiful and often breathtaking when you just gaze upward with your eyes alone. So let me offer a few simple tips for getting the most out of what I call “eyeball astronomy.”
As always, you’ll see more of the night’s offerings if you can find a wide-open spot that’s far away from bright lights. It doesn’t matter whether you go to a neighborhood soccer field or trek far out of town. Anything you can do to get to a darker location will help. Of course, you’ll also see more stars when the Moon is not bright.
Next, you’ll also see more by giving your eyes time to adjust to the darkness. You probably know that the pupils of your eyes expand in darkness, letting more light reach the retina, and that’s part of it. But the sensors that our eyes use for night vision, called rods, respond to dark surroundings by secreting the protein rhodopsin, sometimes called “visual purple.” Rhodopsin gradually builds up as you stand there in the dark, fortifying the ability of your rods to see faint light. It takes your eyes 30 minutes or longer to become fully dark adapted. By the way, any blast of white light — like from a flashlight or car headlights — destroys the rhodopsin, meaning you have to wait for it to build up again.
For us northerners, July is a time of long hot days. When the sky is hazy and stagnant, you’ll see that stars don’t seem to twinkle very much — because we’re seeing them through relatively calm air. Astronomers refer to this as good “seeing,” because what you “see” through a telescope looks steadier than would normally be the case. But when it’s hazy, the sky’s transparency, or clarity, isn’t very good. On the best of nights, the atmosphere is both calm and transparent — that’s the best time to enjoy the night sky.
Finally, you might wonder how I can say something like, “Go out around 8 p.m. to see such and such.” How can that be true no matter where you are? It’s because time zones were created to closely match the Sun’s location in the sky regardless of your longitude. So what I see in the night sky at 10 pm in Boston is almost exactly what you’ll see at 10 pm in, say, San Francisco. There can a little difference that depends on your latitude, but for the most part my stargazing tips will work all across the U.S. — or in southern Canada or in Europe or even Asia. 
But not so much in the Southern Hemisphere, I’m afraid — maybe someday, when Sky Tour gets wildly popular, I’ll do a version for our stargazing friends in Australia, South America, and southern Africa. 
*****
July opens with the Moon just past full and rising in the southeast just after it gets dark. But it rises about a half hour later each evening after that, and in about a week it won’t rise until around midnight. Last quarter is on July 7th, and new Moon follows on the 14th. Two A couple of days later it reappears as a fingernail-thin crescent low in the west. On the 16th it makes a pretty pairing with Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo, and it reaches first quarter on the 21st. 
Then, on the 24th, its fattening gibbous disk slips by Antares, the alpha star in Scorpius, before shining brightly as the full Moon on the 29th. This is traditionally known as the full Buck Moon, so called by Native Americans because that’s when they noticed new antlers of buck deer pushing out from their foreheads. And it’s sometimes called the Full Thunder Moon, because, well, thunderstorms are common this time of year.
For those of us at northern latitudes, you’ll notice that the full Moon doesn’t get very high up during July — even when it’s highest, around midnight. There’s an explanation for that! A full Moon is almost directly opposite the Sun in the sky, give or take a few degrees. So right now, as you’re listening, stretch out your arms to the side so they form a straight line. Go ahead, no one is watching. Now if you raise one arm, you have to drop the other to keep that straight line, right? So in July, when the Sun rides high up during daylight, as it does during summer, the full Moon is positioned low down. Just the opposite is true in winter — the Sun is drearily low in the sky, even at noon, but at night the full Moon soars high above us. And that, by the way, is true whether you live in Alaska or Argentina.
If you checked in for last month’s Sky Tour, you’ll recall that Venus and Jupiter were really putting on a show in the west after sunset, with Mercury to their lower right, vying for the “Best Supporting Planet” award. That’s all changed now. Mercury is long gone, and Jupiter drops hopelessly out of sight in the early days of July. That leaves Venus to reign supreme in the evening sky.
You’ve probably heard that Venus is sometimes called the “Evening Star” when it’s so dominant after sunset — even though it’s not a star at all. And conversely it’s called the “Morning Star” when it’s well up before dawn. The comings and goings of Venus can be curious. For example, back in 2022 Venus spent nine months in the evening sky, yet it barely made it out of evening twilight.
The reason for this is that Venus completes 13 orbits around the Sun in the time it takes Earth to finish eight, pretty much exactly. So the evening appearance you’re seeing right now —  where and how high it gets, how long it stays in view — mimics what happened in the summer of 2018. Ancient Maya skywatchers were very aware of this repeating cycle, and now you are as well!
Is there anything worthwhile in the morning sky before dawn? Now, I’m not asking you to get up wicked early every day. But if you do head out before twilight gets too bright, you’ll find Mars sandwiched between the Pleiades cluster higher up and Aldebaran, in Taurus, lower down. Saturn is off to the right, well up in the south and on its own below the Great Square of Pegasus. And if you’ve got a pair of binoculars lying around, take a close look at Mars on the morning of July 4th. Just above it, very close by but just 1/60 as bright, is the planet Uranus.
*****
Back in the evening, after the Sun sinks from view, scan the western sky for bright stars. Easiest to spot is Arcturus, very bright and much higher than Venus in the southwest, most of the way to overhead. Over to its right is the Big Dipper, seemingly hanging by its handle in the evening sky.
Almost directly below Arcturus, by about three times the width of your clenched fist held at arm’s length, is the icy-white star Spica [SPEE-kuh]. It’s the alpha star in the constellation Virgo, the Maiden. But there’s nothing particularly lady-like about this stellar beacon. It’s actually two stars whirling around each other so fast and so close that they’ve distorted each other into egg shapes. And it’s a good thing Spica is 850 light-years away — it outshines the Sun by more than 12,000 times with intense, lethally high-energy light. Not the kind of star you’d want to have right next door to our solar system. 
Spica is one of only four very bright stars periodically occulted, or covered, by the Moon. (The other three are Regulus, Antares, and Aldebaran.) Each star has its own occultation season, during which these coverups can occur monthly for up to several years. Regulus got blinked out in February and again in April. Spica got its turn a year ago on July 13th, but this month you’ll have to settle for a near miss on the evening of July 20th, when they’ll be 3° apart. 
And here’s a little factoid: Spica is represented, along with 26 other stars, on the flag of Brazil. Those 26 serve as a map representing the night sky as it appeared over Rio de Janeiro on November 15, 1889 — the day the First Brazilian Republic was established. Spica is the only star positioned above the flag’s white band. It represents the state of Pará and the portion of Brazil that extends into the Northern Hemisphere. 
To the left of Spica, by about five times the width of your clenched fist held at arm’s length, is the bright star Antares, the heart of Scorpius. Can you tell that Antares has a reddish tinge compared to icy-white Spica? Antares has its own claim to fame. It’s a red supergiant, about 550 light-years away, and it’s one of the largest stars known, almost 700 times bigger than our Sun. In fact, if you swapped in Antares for our Sun, it would take up all the inner solar system out to the orbit of Mars and then some.
To the left of Antares by 2 or 3 fists is a group of stars in the constellation Sagittarius that are shaped like a teapot. In fact, that’s what astronomers call it — the Teapot. Look for four medium-bright stars in the shape of a trapezoid that form the pot. Highest up is the pointy top. The handle is off the left and the spout to the right. The whole thing is a bit bigger than your clenched fist. This is a fairly obvious star pattern, or asterism. None of the stars in the Teapot is particularly distinctive, but they’re all closely matched in brightness — and that helps the pattern stand out.
*****
Finally, there’s a meteor shower that peaks on night of July 30th. It’s called the Southern Delta Aquariids. That’s a mouthful, but the clue here is that these shooting stars appear to radiate across the sky from the constellation Aquarius. For us in the Northern Hemisphere, Aquarius is well above the southern horizon for a couple of hours before and a few hours after midnight. So if you’re out late and watching from a very dark location, you might see 10 or 20 per hour. Unfortunately, as you now know, the Moon will be full on the 29th — largely spoiling this year’s show.
*****
Thanks for letting me expand your celestial horizons for another month. If you want more tips for viewing the night sky, including a free, interactive star chart for any time or date, check out our website, SkyandTelescope.org.
If you haven’t already subscribed, you can find Sky Tour on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. And if you’ve enjoyed listening, please let me know by leave a rating or review! I really welcome your feedback.
And if you want to explore the solar system and universe more deeply, check out the full line of binoculars and telescopes available at Celestron.com.
Sky Tour is a production of Sky & Telescope, a division of the American Astronomical Society, and is produced by me, Kelly Beatty.
Next month we’ll look for steam coming from a celestial teapot and what that has to do with the Milky Way. Until then, I wish you Clear Skies.