The Summer Milky Way is at its prime because this is when it will stretch high over the top of the sky from north to south as soon as evening twilight ends.  Traveling just a short distance from the city lights (say a small way up one of the nearby canyons) will reveal the Milky Way as a faint band of light, and you’ll be amazed at how much binoculars will reveal. We’ll give you some tips on how to view it and what other deep sky objects that can be found there.

The Ring Nebula in the constellation Lyra

One of the objects we’ll be featuring is called the Ring Nebula in Lyra. It is probably one of the finest examples of a “planetary nebula” in the entire sky.  In a telescope it looks like a small grayish smoke ring in the sky.  In reality it’s a site of star death – an expanding shell of gas and dust lit up by the dying White Dwarf star in its center.

What about the planets?  Most are in the same part of the sky as the sun and are thus lost in the sun’s glare, but if you’re willing to look to the east at around midnight, you’ll be treated to an incredibly bright “star” rising over the Wasatch Mountains.  It’s the planet Jupiter!  Even in binoculars you might be lucky enough to see some of its moons as tiny little stars hugging close to Jupiter’s disk.

So join us Saturday, September 3 at 6:45 p.m. in the Hansen Dome Theatre for another look at the summer’s best sky treasures! Tickets are just $1. Members are free.

Yes, the summer solstice occurs at 11:16 am, MDT, on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011. This is the astronomical beginning of summer, when the mid-day sun is at its highest in the sky. The days are longest, the nights shortest. The Sun rises at its farthest point north of east and sets at its farthest point north of west.

June solstice at midday

There is a latitude line on the Earth called the ‘arctic circle.’ This line is located about 23.5 degrees south of the north pole. On the solstice, the sun will not set for observers on the arctic circle. The Sun will rise higher and higher until midday, then sink lower and lower toward the horizon, but will not set. It will appear to ‘bounce’ off the horizon at midnight, then start climbing again. Points north of this line have been experiencing 24-hour-daytime days for some number of days, with the number of days increasing the farther north you go. At the North Pole, there has been 24 hours of daylight since the equinox in March.

In the southern hemisphere the seasons are reversed. The June solstice is still on the 21st. The Sun is still rising and setting in the northeast and northwest, respectively and is still at its farthest point north at midday. But this mark the beginning of winter, when the Sun is at its lowest point in the sky and the day is its shortest, the night its longest.

June solstice from South Africa

Beginning Tuesday July 5, Utah Museum of Natural History will host Planetary Explorations, taking campers on an exploration of the Earth, moon and stars. They will investigate how and why the Earth and moon move through the solar system and create models to explain their observations of the night sky. Kids will have the opportunity to work with Clark Planetarium education staff and meet astronomers on visits to the University of Utah’s Physics Department.

The four day camp (7/5 – 7/8/2011) is $195 and registration is available online.

Summer camps make learning fun with hands on activities and team building exercises.

Next up on our list of summer adventures is the Mission to Mars/Bizarre and Amazing Plants Camp (7/11 – 7/15/2011). For this camp our education staff will be at Red Butte Garden to teach kids about life on Mars. Through experimentation and discovery, they will learn about the mysterious red planet. There will also be an afternoon session about other-worldly plants like the Corpse Flower and Dragon Blood Tree.

This camp is for 5th and 6th graders and is available for $235.

Also at Red Butte Garden is the Out of this World Science/Weather Watchers Camp. During the week of July 18 (7/18 – 7/22/2011) campers explore “out of this world science” and weather activities. They will spend the first part of the day with our education staff learning how to build comets, design spacecrafts and perform a variety of other exciting experiments. In the afternoon, they learn about the physical world by discovering how Utah’s unique weather affects local plants and animals.

This camp is for 3rd and 4th graders and is available for $235. Registration for the Red Butte Gardens camps is available here.

In August, Clark Planetarium and Discovery Gateway partner for the Summer Science Adventure Camp (8/2 – 8/4/2011). Here kids will receive hands-on training that inspires teamwork, creativity and innovation. They will be challenged to see the world differently, whether it is looking at something a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, or as large as galaxies in the universe.

This three day camp is for 5th and 6th graders and is available for $195 (Clark Planetarium and Discovery Gateway members receive 15% off). To register, email reservations@clarkplanetarium.org.

So goes our yearly battle with the Great Mars Hoax that started in 2003. Each year, several emails make their rounds, promising that Mars will amaze and delight, appearing as large as the Full Moon.

We originally posted the article below in August 2009, but wanted to help educate our new readers this year, so we’re posting it again…

This often begins in May or June and continues until early September. We’re sorry, we wish we could get them to stop, we really do!

The History

In August 2003, Earth and Mars were closer together than they had been or would be again for thousands of years…and Mars looked really good through a decent sized telescope. You could even see a little surface detail! (light and dark regions). But to the casual observer, it was just a bright red dot in the night sky. Usually, though, Mars is far from spectacular, not exceptionally bright or even interesting in a small amateur telescope– and that’s the case here. Let me explain.

The Science

These hoax emails use many astronomical terms in order to sound credible, but often incorrectly. They talk of azimuth, altitude, opposition etc but ignore Mars’ actual position in our sky, its orbit, or physics in general (Why be bothered by reality?).

When Mars is at opposition, which means that it is opposite the sun in our sky, they say that it will be as large as the full moon.  From now until about 2014, we are about as far away (at opposition) as we can get from Mars, which makes it appear smaller and dimmer in our sky than normal at that time. Mars will still look like a decently bright star, but that’s about it.

In 2003 Mars was in opposition in August.  In 2009, Mars is NOT in opposition at all, but will reach opposition at the end of January 2010. It’s magnitude in August is not -2.9 as claimed, but about +1, which is MUCH dimmer. The reality is that nothing amazing is happening with Mars, except for our  NASA and ESA space missions there.

What would it take for the hoax to be true???

Hypothetically, if it were possible for Mars to be as large as the full moon, either Mars would have to be made bigger ….

Or it would have to move MUCH closer…

A very reputable link with an enormous amount of info on Mars is here.

The Clark Planetarium solar system fact sheet can be downloaded here.

Lammas is traditionally recognized as August 1st each year, and is celebrated by baking loaves of bread from the first wheat harvests. But there is a strong astronomical connection to this date as well.

Lammas is a cross-quarter day, marking the halfway point between the summer solstice in June and the autumnal equinox in September. Although we declare the beginning of each season by the associated solstice or equinox date, we begin to think about the changing of the season closer to the cross-quarter dates. Autumn may begin on September 22nd this year, but it is around the beginning of August that our thoughts and activities begin to switch from summer-mode to fall-mode. For many, school is beginning. For most others, back-to-school shopping is at least underway. Summer vacations are winding down. Harvest season is upon us and the canning of fruits and vegetables is about to begin. As the ‘dog days of summer’ set in, we even start hoping for cooler weather.

August 1st may be called the Day of Lammas, but the actual mid-point date will vary. For 2009, the summer solstice was on June 21st and the autumnal equinox will be on Sept. 22nd, so the actual cross-quarter date is August 6th.

You are more familiar with the other cross-quarter dates of the year than you may realize. Going backwards from Lammas on August 1st, halfway between the summer solstice in June and the spring equinox in March is May Day, on May 1st. Halfway between the spring equinox in March and the winter solstice in December is Groundhog Day, February 2nd. Halfway between the winter solstice in December and the fall equinox in September is Halloween, October 31st. It’s interesting that we don’t celebrate the astronomical season dates, but we do celebrate these midpoint dates: the cross-quarter days.