Joe Rao is Space.com's skywatching columnist, as well as a veteran meteorologist and eclipse chaser who also serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications.
This week finds a relative paucity of bright planets in our evening sky. Only one, Mercury, is available by month's end, but even then, this rocky little world can only be glimpsed for about 30 to 45 minutes after sundown very low to the west-northwest horizon. After that, you'll have to wait until after the witching hour of midnight to sight another celestial wanderer,
Consequently, the full moon in June usually has a beautiful golden appearance, just like good honey. Interestingly, scholars are fairly sure that the oldest of our star groups trace back to the Mesopotamian peoples of five or more millennia ago. In fact, the creatures that were made into the ancientare similar to those in the Bible. And there are hints that some are far older. The fact that the seven stars of the Big Dipper formed a bear to Native Americans and to the cultures of the Old World and Siberia suggests that ouris a piece of Stone Age culture at least 8,000 to 12,000 years old.
In Great Britain, it is better known as the Plough. But as a Dipper it is strictly an American phenomenon; this celestial"drinking gourd" was often mentioned in mid-19th-century books, but not before then. It's unfortunate that the Little Dipper is so much fainter and more difficult to see compared to the Big Dipper, since — at least to my eyes — it resembles more closely a real dipper, such as might be used to ladle soup. The Big Dipper looks more like a saucepan.
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