The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of July 18, 2026

 Saturday: Venus is one fist held upright and at arm’s length above due west at 9:30 p.m.

Sunday: Zubenelgenubi, the second brightest star in the constellation Libra. The name means "southern claw", a holdover from the time when this part of the sky was associated with the neighboring constellation of Scorpius the scorpion. Zubenelgenubi is a binary star system, easily seen with binoculars as a white and yellow pair. To a person living on a planet orbiting the dimmer of the two stars, the brighter star would be nearly as bright as the full Moon appears from Earth. Zubenelgenubi is two fists above the southwestern horizon at 10:30 p.m.

Monday: Take a two and a half hour walk today. Too long, you say? 57 years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first ever walk by humans on another world. They spend two and a half hours setting up scientific instruments and collecting rocks for study back on Earth. Their colleague Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the spacecraft the astronauts would use to return to Earth. While everyone seems to know about Armstrong and Aldrin, spend some time learning more about Collins by reading https://time.com/5966399/michael-collins-appreciation/. The bright star Spica is a half a fist above the moon, low in the southwestern sky at 10:00 p.m.

Tuesday: Mars is two fists above the east-northeastern horizon at 4:30 a.m. Saturn is four fists above the southeastern horizon at this time.

Wednesday: Capella is the fourth brightest star we can see in Ellensburg. It is the most northerly bright star. It is a binary star consisting of two yellow giant stars that orbit each other every 100 days. At 10:17 p.m., Capella is less than a half a fist above due north.

Thursday: What you see with the naked eye isn’t all that can be seen. While astronomers can learn a lot from observing the sky in the visible wavelengths, many celestial objects radiate more light, and more information, in wavelengths such as radio, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma ray. In 2012, NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to study objects that radiate in the infrared range such as asteroids, cool dim stars, and luminous galaxies. For an interesting comparison of how different wavelengths show various aspects of celestial objects, go to http://goo.gl/nvuax. If it weren’t for infrared telescopes such as WISE, astronomers would not know about the significant amount of dust in galaxies. If you’d like to learn more about galaxies, the CWU Lydig Planetarium has free shows at 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. today. They are in Discovery Hall, room 101. Here is a Google maps link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nwp1e5t7qXk5bfE9. Parking on campus is free after 4:30 p.m.

Friday: The bright star Antares is about a half a fist to the upper right of the moon, low in the southern sky at 10:00 p.m. Being bright doesn’t necessarily mean being big. But in this case, it does. Antares is a red supergiant star. In the visible wavelengths, Antares shines 10,000 times brighter than the Sun. But since Antares is much cooler than the Sun, its energy distribution peaks in the infrared. So, across all wavelengths of light, Antares shines 60,000 times brighter than the Sun.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of July 11, 2026

Saturday: Stonehenge was created on the island of Great Britain by Neolithic people. “Manhattanhenge” was created on the island of Manhattan by modern day architects and construction workers. Twice a year, at the end of May and mid-July, the setting Sun aligns perfectly with the Manhattan grid pattern. That means observers will see the Sun set at the end of the street. The first Manhattanhenge sunset of July is tonight at 8:20 p.m. Eastern time and then again tomorrow at 8:21 p.m. Eastern time. For more information about Manhattanhenge, go to https://www.amnh.org/research/hayden-planetarium/manhattanhenge.

Sunday: Since 2014, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has been orbiting Mars gathering information about the Martian upper atmosphere. Studying the atmosphere and climate on other planets is crucial for helping scientists understand the Earth’s climate history and make better predictions about its future. Unfortunately, as of early July, the White House proposed 2025-26 budget cuts funding for this mission. While MAVEN may no longer be able to send valuable information back to Earth, Mars will always be visible to us. Mars is about two fists above the eastern horizon at 4:30 a.m., just above Aldebaran, a star of similar brightness. Saturn is about two fists above due southeast at this time.

Monday: Venus is one fist above the western horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Tuesday: Eleven years ago today, NASA’s New Horizons probe passed by Pluto. If the band Nirvana was still together, they’d probably rewrite one of their hit songs to be called Heart-Shaped Spot, after one of Pluto’s most distinctive features. “She eyes me like a dwarf planet when I am weak. I’ve been imaging your heart-shaped spot for weeks.” Astronomers think this heart-shaped spot is a large plain of nitrogen ice that consists of convective cells 10-30 miles across. Solid nitrogen is warmed in the interior of Pluto, becomes buoyant, and bubbles up to the surface like a lava lamp. You will find great pictures and information about what New Horizons found this past year at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/. Pluto, itself, is one fist above the southeastern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Hey, wait, I’ve got a new complaint. People should be more interested in astronomy. The best group to start with is children. If you are stuck at home, wondering what to do, go to the NASA Kids Club website at https://www.nasa.gov/kidsclub/. There are fun and educational activities for younger children. Older children may like my favorite NASA website - about planets outside our Solar System. I suggest first exploring the “Galaxy of Horrors!” at https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/galaxy-of-horrors/.

Wednesday: GPS helps a lot of people find their way around the Earth, a planet they drive on all the time. Imagine how helpful it would be for the moon, a place that astronauts have not visited for over 50 years. The National Institute of Standards (NIST) has proposed using ultra stable lasers placed on the moon’s permanently shadowed craters. Even a little bit of heat causes the lasers to expand enough to make them too imprecise to accurately measure distances. Read more about this at https://www.space.com/astronomy/moon/lasers-in-moon-craters-could-create-a-lunar-gps-system. The moon is half a fist above the west-northwestern horizon at 9:30 p.m.

Thursday: The Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower has a long gradual peak for the next few weeks into mid-August. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. These meteors appear to come from a point in Aquarius near the star Delta Aquarii, also known as Skat. This point is about two and a half fists above the southeast horizon at 3:00 am early this morning. You can follow this point throughout the night and for the next few weeks, as it will remain a fist above Fomalhaut, the brightest star in that section of the sky. Read about the shower, at https://earthsky.org/?p=159138. As your mother might say, dress warmly and sit in a comfortable chair for maximum enjoyment. Meteors are tiny rocks that hit the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

Friday: Say "Cheese". 175 years ago, Vega, in the constellation Lyra the lyre, became the first star ever photographed. The photograph was taken at the Harvard Observatory using the daguerreotype process. Vega is the third brightest nighttime star we can see in Ellensburg, behind Sirius and Arcturus. Vega is nearly straight overhead at midnight.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of July 4, 2026

Saturday: Let’s learn about Capella. It is the fourth brightest star we can see in Ellensburg. It is the brightest northerly star. It is a binary star consisting of two yellow giant stars that orbit each other every 100 days. At 11:30 p.m., Capella is a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above due north. You can also use the Big Dipper to find it. First, find the two “cap” stars on the cup of the Big Dipper, the stars on the top of the cup. Draw a line from the “cap” star closest to the handle to the cap star farthest from the handle. Then, continue that line to the next very bright star, which is Capella. Thus, you can “cap” to Capella. If you can’t “cap” tonight, don’t worry. Capella is the brightest circumpolar star meaning it is the brightest star that never goes below the horizon from our point of view in Ellensburg.

Sunday: Look straight up at midnight. The head of Draco the dragon will be looking straight down on you. The brightest star in the head is called Eltanin. If you wait for a VERY long time, Eltanin will be the brightest star in the entire night sky. Currently 154 light years away, it is moving towards Earth and will be only 28 light years away in about 1.3 million years, claiming the title as the brightest star.

Monday: Hot enough for you? Don’t blame the Earth-Sun distance. Surprisingly, the overall temperature of the Earth is slightly higher in July, when the Earth is farthest from the Sun, than in January, when it is closest. That’s because in July, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun. (This is the real cause of the seasons.) The Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern Hemisphere. Thus, in July, the large amount of Northern Hemisphere land heats up the entire Earth about two degrees Celsius warmer than in January. In January, the watery Southern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun. But water does not heat up as fast as land, so the Earth is a few degrees cooler. The distance between the Earth and the Sun is its greatest today, 152.1 million kilometers. This is called aphelion from the Greek prefix “apo” meaning “apart” and Helios, the Greek god of the Sun.

Tuesday: While exploring Jezero crater on Mars in 2024, NASA’s Perseverance rover discovered an interesting looking rock they named Cheyava Falls. This rock contains iron and phosphate, elements that are often associated with microbial life, so the rover did some tests on the material. Late last year, NASA reported the rock contained sedimentary mud-like material associated with peat bogs and decaying organic matter on Earth. Scientists would need to bring the material to Earth for confirmation, but this is the best evidence yet for Mars having life in the past. For more information about this finding, watch https://youtu.be/kvcfO_-p6YE. For confirmation Mars exists, look one and a half fists above the eastern horizon at 4:30 a.m. At this same time, Saturn is about a half a fist below the moon, above due southeast.

Wednesday: The bright star Regulus is less than a pinky-width to the lower left of Venus, a fist and a half above the western horizon at 9:30 p.m. Jupiter is to the lower right of Venus, just above the west-northwestern horizon at this time.

Thursday: Nebulas are diffuse clouds of gas and dust where stars form. The second brightest is the Lagoon Nebula, in the constellation Sagittarius. It is visible with the naked eye from a very dark site however it is best viewed with binoculars. At 11:30 p.m., find the teapot-shaped asterism of Sagittarius about a fist above the southern horizon. Look at the triangle-shaped spout on the right side of the teapot. Spread out your thumb and forefinger to match the height of the triangle. Then look at that same thumb-forefinger span above the triangle. The Lagoon Nebula is there. Aim your binoculars at that spot.

If you’d like to learn more about nebulas, the CWU Lydig Planetarium has free shows at 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. today. They are in Discovery Hall, room 101. Here is a Google maps link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nwp1e5t7qXk5bfE9. Parking on campus is free after 4:30 p.m.

Friday: About ten years ago astronomers using a radio telescope in Australia discovered the source of fleeting radio signal bursts that had been a mystery for 17 years. And they didn’t have to probe the depths of deep space. They only had to probe the depths of… the observatory kitchen. It turns out the signal came from opening the microwave door prematurely. Read more about The Microwave Emission here: http://goo.gl/Ftb04C. Sheldon Cooper used similar methods of science when he discovered a can opener instead of magnetic monopoles in the season three premiere of “The Big Bang Theory” http://goo.gl/kAEoOD.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of June 28, 2026

Saturday: Nearly 400 years ago, Galileo looked at the Pleiades star cluster through his telescope and noticed that the seven or so stars in the region visible to the naked eye became many more. There are two main types of star clusters. Open star clusters, like the Pleiades and the Beehive, are groups of a few dozen to a few thousand stars that formed from the same cloud of gas and dust within our galaxy. Stars in open star clusters are young as far as stars go. Globular clusters are groups of up to a few million stars that orbit the core of spiral galaxies such as our own Milky Way. One of the most well-known star clusters is the globular cluster in Hercules, an object that is fairly easy to find with binoculars. First find Vega, the bright bluish star six and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the eastern horizon at 11:00 p.m. Two fists above Vega, and close to straight overhead, is a keystone shape that represents the body of Hercules. Aim your binoculars at the upper left-hand star of the keystone, the star closest to straight overhead. The globular cluster is one third of the way to the rightmost star of the keystone. It looks like a fuzzy patch on the obtuse angle of a small obtuse triangle. If you don’t know what an obtuse angle is, you should not have told your teacher, “I’ll never need to know this math stuff you are teaching”.

Sunday: Jupiter is about a half a fist above the west-northwestern horizon at 9:45 p.m. Mercury is below it, likely too close to the horizon to be visible. They are moving towards the Sun in the sky and will soon be lost in its glare. At one and a half fists above the western horizon, Venus is still far enough from the Sun in the sky to be visible in the evening sky for a few more weeks.

Monday: The July full moon is the Buck Moon, named for the new antlers that form on the forehead of male deer this time of year.

Tuesday: Happy Asteroid Day (http://www.asteroidday.org/), the day we celebrate avoiding the destruction of the Earth by an undiscovered asteroid. There are about a million asteroids in the Solar System with the potential to strike Earth and destroy a city. Astronomers have discovered only 1% of them. Asteroid Day is an effort to educate the public and encourage policy makers to fund this important effort. King Tut may have celebrated an ancient Asteroid Day by asking his assistants to make a dagger out of a broken-off asteroid that landed on Earth. Astronomers discovered that the blade of the knife contained much more nickel than is found in terrestrial iron, an amount consistent with iron meteorites, especially with one found in the year 2000 in the Kharga region in northern Egypt. For more information about the dagger, go to http://goo.gl/BHBivd.

Wednesday: Mizar is a star in the middle of the Big Dipper handle. Don’t confuse Mizar with its rhyming brother Izar in the constellation Boötes. Izar is also a binary star with about the same apparent brightness. And both were featured in different episodes of Star Trek. Izar was featured in the Star Trek episode “Whom Gods Destroy” from the original series. It is the base of Fleet Captain Garth, a former big shot in the federation and one of Kirk’s heroes before he went insane. Garth kidnaps Kirk and Spock before eventually being outsmarted. Mizar doesn’t play as big a role in its episode. It is the star of the home world of one of the alien species in The Next Generation episode “Allegiance”. Izar is one fist above the bright star Arcturus and exactly six fists above the west-southwestern horizon at 11:00 p.m. Mizar is nearly six fists above the west-northwestern horizon.

Thursday: Being in a coma is a bad thing. Looking at the Coma Star Cluster is a good thing. The Coma Star Cluster is an open cluster of about 50 stars that takes up more space in the sky than 10 full Moons. It looks like a fuzzy patch with the naked eye. Binoculars reveal dozens of sparkling stars. A telescope actually diminishes from the spectacle because the cluster is so big and the telescope’s field of view is so small. The Coma Star Cluster is in the faint constellation Coma Berenices (ba-ron-ice’-ez) or Queen Berenice’s hair. Queen Berenice of Egypt cut off her beautiful hair as a sacrifice to the gods for the safe return of her husband Ptolemy III from battle. The Coma Star Cluster is about three fists above the western horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Friday: Mars is about one and a half fists above the east-northeastern horizon at 4:30 a.m., halfway between the Pleiades and Hyades open star clusters. But that’s not the most interesting thing about looking at Mars this morning. The planet Uranus is right above Mars in the sky this morning. Uranus is not quite bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. But it is easily visible with binoculars, right above Mars.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of June 20, 2026

Saturday: At 10:00 p.m., very bright Venus is one and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the western horizon. Jupiter is to the lower right of Venus, a half a fist above the horizon. Mercury is to the lower right of Jupiter, just above the west-northwestern horizon.

Sunday: At 1:25 a.m. today, the Sun reached its highest declination (the official name for sky latitude) of 23.5 degrees above the celestial equator. The celestial equator is the line that divides the northern sky from the southern sky. That makes today the first full day of summer. In Ellensburg, the Sun is about seven fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 1:00 p.m. (noon standard time) on the first day of summer.

Contrary to widespread belief, the Sun is never straight overhead in Ellensburg or anywhere else in the 48 contiguous states. The northernmost portion of the world where the Sun can be directly overhead is 23.5 degrees north latitude. In ancient times, the Sun was in the constellation Cancer the crab on the first day of summer. Hence, 23.5 degrees north latitude has the nickname "Tropic of Cancer". Because the Earth wobbles like a spinning top, the Sun's apparent path through the sky changes slightly over time. Now, the Sun is in the constellation Taurus the Bull on the first day of summer. However, citing the high cost of revising all the science books, geographers are not changing the name of 23.5 degrees north latitude to "Tropic of Taurus". The first day of summer is often called the summer solstice. However, astronomers refer to the summer solstice as the point in the sky in which the Sun is at its highest declination above the celestial equator. Summer starts when the Sun is at the summer solstice point.

Monday: Don’t wait until July 4 to watch those wimpy firecracker shows. Find the hypergiant star Rho Cassiopeiae. Astronomers think that Rho Cassiopeiae will likely go supernova (explode) in the near future. Of course, for stars, “near future” might mean tomorrow. It might mean 20,000 years from now. Rho Cassiopeiae is in the constellation Cassiopeia the queen. At 11:00 tonight, Cassiopeia looks like the letter “W” about two and a half fists above the north-northeastern horizon. Rho Cassiopeiae is about a finger’s width to the right of the rightmost star in the “W”. Once you find it you’ll be thinking, “Big deal, I can hardly see it.” Although it is barely visible to the naked eye, it is actually very bright. It is the 20^th most luminous star in the sky, a whopping 550,000 times more luminous than the Sun.

Tuesday: The bright star Spica is about a half fist to the upper right of the moon, in the south-southwestern sky at 10:00 p.m.

Wednesday: “Mom, I can’t sleep. It is too light out!” A poor excuse you say. Good astronomy skills, I say. The latest sunset of the year happens around this date. Surprisingly, the earliest sunrise and the latest sunset do not both happen on the longest day of the year, the day of the summer solstice. The earliest sunrise occurs just before the longest day and the latest sunset occurs just after the longest day. This phenomenon relates to the angle of the Sun’s path near rising and setting. In Ellensburg, that angle is about 66 degrees above the southern horizon at noon near the first day of summer. Because of the Earth’s orbit, which causes the Sun’s apparent motion, the angles are not symmetric. The asymmetry in orbital angles leads to the asymmetry in rise and set times. This year, the sun sets at about 9:01 p.m. every night the rest of this week as viewed from Ellensburg, WA. Find sunset data for your location at https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/.

Thursday: At 4:00 a.m., Mars is one fist above the east-northeastern horizon. Saturn is two and a half fists above the south-southeastern horizon at this time.

Friday: The bright star Antares is about a half fist to the left of the moon at 11:00 p.m., one and a half fists above due south. If you’d like to learn more about stars like Antares, the CWU Lydig Planetarium has free shows at 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. today. They are in Discovery Hall, room 101. Here is a Google maps link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nwp1e5t7qXk5bfE9. Parking on campus is free after 4:30 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of June 13, 2026

 

CWU graduation is this weekend. Your favorite graduate deserves a gift. Why not get her, him, or them a star? I don’t mean from one of those organizations that offer to “register the name of YOUR star with the U.S. Patent Office”. No company owns the right to name stars after people. Besides, the stars that those companies “name” are so dim you can’t find them. In this column, I’ll pick a constellation and representative star for each of the four colleges at CWU. Then, I’ll briefly tell the story of the constellation and relate that story to the aspect of public service CWU graduates from that college are highly qualified to engage in based on my version of sky interpretation. If different couples can have “their” song, then your favorite college graduate can have their star. If you can’t make it to campus, celebrate with your favorite CWU 2026 graduate at the Livestreamed ceremony shown here: http://www.cwu.edu/commencement/.

Saturday: College of Arts and Humanities: You are the people who interpret the world in unique ways. Then, you share those ways with others. According to Greek mythology, Orpheus charmed everyone he met when he played the lyre or harp. After his wife died tragically, he journeyed to the underworld to charm its inhabitants in an effort to win his wife back to the living world. Your service reminder: use your talent to bring joy to others. The constellation Lyra and its bright star Vega should remind you of the power of the arts. Vega is five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above the eastern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Sunday: "Do I have to wake up yet? It's so early!" The next few days have the earliest sunrises for the northern part of the United States, including Ellensburg. "Wait, I thought this happened on the longest day of the year, which hasn't occurred yet." Because the Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, the sunrise and sunset time is not symmetric. The earliest sunrise occurs before the longest day, and the latest sunset occurs after the longest day. Go to http://earthsky.org/?p=4027 to read more about this phenomenon. While you are up early, look for the planets Venus and Saturn. Venus is one fist above the eastern horizon and Saturn is two and a half fists above the east-southeastern horizon at 4:15 a.m.

Monday: College of Business. You are the future movers and shakers. The future CEOs. The future big donors to Central. Auriga represented a king of Athens who happened to be mobility impaired. Instead of sitting around waiting for others to transport him, he took the initiative to invent the four-wheeled chariot. He solved a problem for a special need. Your service reminder: address the problems of those in the most need. To remind you of that, look to the constellation Auriga. Its bright star Capella is about a half a fist above the north-northwestern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Tuesday: Mars’ two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, are not visible in typical backyard telescopes. But they are an interesting study. The former view among astronomers was that both moons are captured asteroids. That makes sense given Mars’ proximity to the asteroid belt. But recent findings by European astronomers indicate that Phobos is very porous and made of material similar to the surface of Mars. This implies that Phobos may consist of chunks of Martian debris that was blasted off by numerous impacts and gravitationally bound together. Unfortunately, the Russian Phobos-Grunt probe launched late 2011 to collect material from Phobos crashed to Earth after malfunctioning. For more information about this recent model of Phobos’ formation, go to https://sci.esa.int/web/mars-express/-/31031-phobos. For more information about Mars, look one fist above the east-northeastern horizon at 4:15 a.m. Saturn is two fists above the east-southeastern horizon at this time.

Wednesday: “Three planets and a crescent moon line up in the western sky.” This is not the opening line of a bad joke. It is a description of the evening sky. At 10:00 p.m., the crescent moon is one and a half fists above the western horizon. A little to the lower right is the planet Venus, the brightest point of light in the sky. To the lower right of Venus is Jupiter, the second brightest point of light in the sky tonight. Continuing along that line is Mercury, a half a fist above the west-northwestern horizon.

Thursday: College of Education and Professional Studies. You are the teachers. The craftspeople. The technical experts. Boötes, the herdsman, was such a person. Boötes’ job was to guide the northern constellations to the feeding place and the watering hole. He and his dogs were especially in charge of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the greater and lesser bears. Your service reminder: guide others to a better place in life. Look to the constellation Boötes and its bright star Arcturus to remind you of this. Arcturus is five and a half fists above the southwestern horizon at 11:00 p.m. If you’d like to learn more about constellations, the CWU Lydig Planetarium has free shows at 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. today. They are in Discovery Hall, room 101. Here is a Google maps link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nwp1e5t7qXk5bfE9. Parking on campus is free after 4:30 p.m.

Friday: College of the Sciences. You are the people who will systematically study how the world works. Agriculture is an important scientific application. Each year, farmers must use the findings of science to be successful. Who better to represent the College of the Sciences than Virgo, the goddess of the harvest? Virgo looms large in the sky holding an ear of wheat in her hand. Your service reminder: study the practical aspects of the scientific world. The ear of wheat, and your service reminder, is represented by the bright star Spica. Spica is two and a half fists above the southwestern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of June 6, 2026

Saturday: I hope that you have never been in a collision. It can be scary and dangerous. The biggest collision in our celestial neighborhood may occur in a few billion years when our Milky Way Galaxy may collide with the Andromeda Galaxy. Notice I said, “MAY occur” and “MAY collide. Up until about a year ago I would have sounded more certain. But recent simulations by astronomers have lowered the chance of a collision to about 50%. These new simulations did a better job in accounting for the effects of the smaller galaxies in the celestial neighborhood. This video shows a simulation with the new findings: https://youtu.be/o2x_31dE04s.

If you can’t stay awake for a few billion years to see the possible collision, stay up until late at night to see the Andromeda Galaxy. First find the Great Square of Pegasus. At 2:00 a.m., the left-hand corner of the square is about two fists held upright and at arm’s length above the east-northeastern horizon. Less than two fists to the left and down a little bit is another star, the same brightness as the star at the corner of the square. From that star, hop about a half a fist up to a star that is about one fourth as bright. Less than another half fist in the same direction is a fuzzy oval patch of light known as the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is about two and a half fists above the northeastern horizon. The galaxy is impressive to see in binoculars. It consists of nearly a trillion stars and is 2.2 million light years away.

Sunday: The Globe at Night June campaign starts tomorrow. Globe at night is a citizen science project to quantify the impact of light pollution on our view of the night sky. Go to https://globeatnight.org/campaigns/ to learn more and participate. This is a fun way to observe the night sky and contribute to science at the same time.

Monday: Venus and Jupiter are neighbors in the sky all week but tonight they are at their closest. Look for them one and a half fists above the west-northwestern horizon at 9:45 p.m. Mercury is to the lower right of them, less than a fist above the horizon.

Tuesday: Alkaid, the end of the Big Dipper handle, is nearly straight overhead at 10:00 p.m.

Wednesday: In 1982, the British group Bow Wow Wow first sang, “I Want Candy”. In May 2019, NASA finally granted that wish by releasing images of Mars’ moon Phobos looking like candy. The thermal imaging camera on NASA’s long lived Odyssey orbiter took a series of images of the full phase of Phobos. The resulting composite, looking like a many layered jawbreakers, shows how the temperature varies throughout the small moon. This temperature distribution, in turn, can help astronomers determine what the moon is made of. For more about this yummy treat, go to https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/why-this-martian-full-moon-looks-like-candy. Mars is about half a fist above the east-northeastern horizon at 4:15 a.m. Saturn is nearly two fists above the east-southeastern horizon at this time, just to the lower right of the moon.

Thursday: It looks so peaceful up in the night sky. But the sky is not peaceful for Jupiter. According to a recent study by astronomers, Jupiter gets hit by a 5-20 meter diameter asteroid 10 to 65 times a year. For comparison, the object that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 was 20 meters in diameter. Earth gets hit by a 20-meter asteroid about once every 50 years. Jupiter is one fist above the west-northwestern horizon at 10:00 p.m., right below the brighter Venus. You can see how much Venus has moved compared to Jupiter over the past three days.

Friday: Are you up at 12:52 a.m., looking due north and thinking you see a UFO coming to take you away? That's no UFO. It's the bright star Capella, a circumpolar star that never goes below the horizon as viewed from Ellensburg.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.