Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday July 6th through Sunday July 12th.
The moon is at third quarter on Tuesday the 7th and then we’ll have a waning crescent moon in the early morning skies for the remainder of the week.
Mercury will be in inferior solar conjunction on Sunday night when it will pass between the sun and the Earth from our perspective. After conjunction, Mercury will start to emerge in our morning skies over the rest of July.
Jupiter is very low in the west as it moves towards solar conjunction at the end of July and is setting about an hour after the sun this week.
Venus continues to shine brightly in the west at sunset and is setting a little after 11 p.m. this week. Look for Venus to move past Regulus, the bright star of the constellation Leo, over the course of the week.
Saturn is rising at 1:10 a.m. at midweek and will be below the third quarter moon on Tuesday morning.
Mars is rising at 3:50 a.m. and will be to the lower right of the thin crescent moon on Saturday morning.
The Earth is at aphelion, our furthest point from the Sun in our orbit, on July 6th when we will be 152 million kilometers from our parent star. Compare that to perihelion in January when we were 147 million kilometers from the Sun.
In space anniversaries this week, Wednesday July 8th marks 15 years since the launch of Atlantis on mission STS-135, the final flight of the US space shuttle program. Over the three decades they operated, shuttle missions delivered and recovered satellites, launched and repaired the Hubble Space Telescope, and delivered large payloads for the construction of the International Space Station. The surviving orbiters can be seen at museums and centers around the country.
There will be no public viewing this summer on UT campus telescopes so we can do maintenance and repairs. We expect to resume the regular viewing schedule in the Fall 2026 semester.
While you’re waiting for Austin-area telescope viewing to resume, you can tune in to McDonald Observatory live streams from west Texas. You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on social media and at McDonaldObservatory.org to be notified of future events.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
