The Storyteller's Night Sky

Follow the Moon as it wanes through the midnight sky this week, and you’ll arrive at the site of a significant celestial event that has occupied and astonished astronomers for centuries.

There’s a waxing gibbous Moon for most of this week, which means our nearest celestial companion will be gathering up most of the available light in the sky unto itself, and washing out the Milky Way, the dimmer stars, and even some of the Summer’s best meteors.

Still there’s a great tale of the emergent feminine to be had in all of this!

There are some dramatic stories thundering through the August night sky every year, including desperate lovers bereft of one another, the miraculous feeding of the hungry multitude, and the great mystery of transfiguration.

This week there are three active meteor showers, a Black Moon, and the Summer Cross Quarter Day, which makes it really exciting for stargazing and story telling.

This season the mighty constellation of the hero Hercules sweeps across the zenith, the uppermost part of the night sky, bearing mystery in his wake.

The Moon will be Full this week on July 16th, a rather peculiar day in history, and one to be reckoned with. Let’s consider:

The planet Saturn, the Titan god of the old order, opposes the Sun this week, while standing on the opposite side of the Milky Way from the planet Jupiter, god of the Olympians. But while these two gods have their counterparts in the celestial world, there’s another player in the story who doesn’t appear; he’s the ‘hidden god’, who serves as the bridge between them.

There’s a terrific mystery being staged in the night sky this week and throughout the summer, where the planets Jupiter and Saturn appear on opposite sides of the Milky Way.

Although it won’t be full until next week, the Moon will put on a dramatic show at the end of this week, rising just as the Sun is setting, while making its way to its fourth and final Full phase of the Spring.

This first full week of June includes a New Moon on Monday and some illustrious dates, if you’re a storyteller of the night sky!

Did you know that in the 16th century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe measured hundreds of stars and created a popular catalog of the night sky without ever once using a telescope? And that Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus also never used that handy device? 

At the middle of this week, Mercury comes to what I’ll call its “Full” phase, and at the end of the week, the Moon achieves its rare Blue Moon phase. We won’t see Mercury, and the Moon won’t appear blue, but still they’re both good for story!

Nearly 1000 years ago, a star went super nova in the region of the Bull’s Horns, in Taurus, and this week, the waxing crescent Moon will sweep over the very spot, opening the door on a fascinating bit of cultural and scientific history.

This week we’re already halfway through the Spring, when the “Cross Quarter” known as May Day occurs on May 2nd, which was a time celebrated in ancient Rome as the festival of Floralia, in honor of the flower goddess Flora, the daughter of Oceanus and the beloved of Zephyrus, the west wind.

Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22nd, which makes it poetically coincident with the Lyrid Meteor Shower. The Lyrids take their name from the constellation Lyra, which bears a challenging story across the sky of lost love in the Earth.

There’s a Full Moon this week, and even though it’s not the first Full Moon of the season, it is the one that determines the Spring festivals of renewal this year, like Easter and Passover.

July this year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, the first space mission to put a human being on our only natural satellite. But 60 years ago this week, the first step took place that would lead to that historic step, ten years later.

Mars is the only evening sky planet this month, visited by the crescent Moon this weekend, but then returning to its solo journey through the stars for the rest of the month.

At midnight this week, the constellation Virgo appears high in the east, holding the star Spica in her arms, and trailing the return of seasonal light in her wake.

A magic moment is upon us this week when the Sun appears to cross the Celestial Equator heading north, bearing greater daylight in its wake. There's also a curious thing happening with the Moon the very same day.

Upon a time, before the faery broods drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,

Before King Oberon's bright diadem, sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem

Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns, from rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns,

The ever-smitten hermes empty left his golden thone, bent warm on amorous theft...

Last week the sky was tremulous as the Earth moved through a wide swath of solar wind, making way for all the terrific phenomena that's happening this week!

The planet Mercury begins its first retrograde of the year on Tuesday, which is Mardi Gras in the Christian calendar. If ever there was a festival that strikes the right mood for this trickster god, then Mardi Gras is it.

"We thus remove and absoltuely abolish the old calendar." 

With these words, written over 400 years ago this week, a universal ordering in the reckoning of time was established.

There's a Full Moon this week, the closest one of the year in fact, which lends itself to the illustrious anniversaries that also happen every year at this time.

There's President's day, honoring the births of Washington and Lincoln; and this is the week that Michelangelo died, in 1564; then there's the English Romantic Poet John Keats, who also died this week in 1821; and for the astronomy world, it's the anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer who formulated a model of our universe that placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the center.