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The Day of Short Shadows

Summer’s long days make for short nights

These are the longest days of the year, with the sky not darkening until well after 8:30 and leaving us with barely six hours of astronomically dark skies. When the sun does set, Saturn appears high in the south, while Jupiter this week rises just before midnight. But the week’s best attractions come before dawn.

This weekend’s solstice is reason enough to rise early and greet the sun, but early risers will enjoy more than the dawning day.

Set your alarm early Friday, and look to the east for the waning crescent moon, which rises before 3am. Close behind is ruddy Mars followed by brilliant Venus, which shines 150 times brighter than Mars. The planets are less than two degrees apart, with the moon five degrees to the north of Mars, all close enough for your fist at arm’s length to obscure them.

While these two planets remain within a couple degrees of one another over the coming week, the fading crescent moon rises more than a half-hour later each morning, amid the stars of the Pleiades Cluster early Saturday and huddled low against the horizon with Mercury early Sunday.

Saturday is the longest day of the year, with summer solstice at 1:46am Sunday morning. The higher the sun rises in the sky, the more distance it travels from one horizon to the other. On the day of summer solstice, the sun rises at its farthest point north in the eastern sky, arching steeply through the day until nearly overhead at noon, casting sharp, short shadows. There, at its apex, the sun appears to pause, then finally angles downward, setting at its most northern point in the west roughly 14 hours and 54 minutes later.