The month of June is named after the Roman goddess Juno, who is also the goddess of marriage. June has the most hours of daylight of any month in the northern hemisphere and the fewest in the southern hemisphere.

This year the summer solstice is at 12:38 p.m. on Sunday, June 21. This is the highest point that the sun will reach on the ecliptic for the whole year. The days will be nearly 151/2 hours long here in New England. They will stay that long for about a week.

SKY GUIDE: This chart represents the sky as it appears over Maine during June. The stars are shown as they appear at 10:30 p.m. early in the month, at 9:30 p.m. at midmonth and at 8:30 p.m. at month’s end. Saturn, Jupiter and Venus are shown in their midmonth positions. To use the map, hold it vertically and turn it so that the direction you are facing is at the bottom. Sky chart prepared by George Ayers

The main highlight this month will be an incredible conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. This event is only the middle such occurrence in a series of three similar conjunctions that could have been the appearances of the Star of Bethlehem 2017 years ago.

These two are our brightest planets and they will be just one-third of a degree apart on the evening of Tuesday, June 30. They start the month about 25 degrees apart. Then they will stay within two degrees of each other for eight full days.

Watch Venus all month long as it goes on an interesting journey through Gemini and Cancer before it gets to Jupiter in Leo by the end of the month. On June 1, the stars Castor and Pollux are evenly spaced in a nearly straight line with Venus in Gemini. Venus will also be exactly half lit by the sun. Watch as it gets less illuminated by the sun even as it gets brighter and larger and closer to Earth.

On June 13, another nearly straight line of equidistant objects occurs with Venus, Jupiter and Regulus, the brightest star in Leo and the 21st brightest star in the sky. On June 14, our sister planet will pass right through the Beehive open star cluster in Cancer. It will be less than one degree from the center of this cluster, which is visible without binoculars.

Then the waxing crescent moon chimes in and forms spectacular conjunctions with the pair in a celestial waltz of great beauty and power. All of this happens before the real highlight, when Venus is less than the width of the full moon below Jupiter.

Venus will be 15 times brighter than Jupiter by this time and it will also appear very close in size to the king of the planets, 33 arc seconds across – Venus is actually 10 times smaller than Jupiter, like the earth.

Then they will both set about 21/2 hours after sunset, so the timing is perfect to witness this rare conjunction. Try to photograph this great event as it unfolds, along with some of the other interesting stops that Venus will take on the way to this close encounter.

Saturn is now just past opposition, but it will still be brighter and closer to us than usual right through the summer. The ringed planet started its retrograde, or westward motion in the sky, back toward Libra on March 14. A superior planet’s opposition always occurs at the midpoint of its retrograde motion, which was May 22 this year for Saturn. It will return to its normal eastward motion on Aug. 2.

Saturn’s globe covers 18 arc seconds of the sky and with its rings it covers 41 arc seconds, which is more than any other planet right now. Saturn’s rings are tilted wide open at 24 degrees from edgewise. Look carefully through a telescope and you will notice that its famous rings are tilted so far open that they extend just beyond its poles, thereby hiding the south pole from view. The nearly full moon will pass just above Saturn on June 28.

Mercury will reach its greatest western elongation from the sun on June 24. It will be 35 percent lit by the sun and getting more illuminated. Look for our first planet low in our east-northeastern sky 45 minutes before sunrise, just to the left of the orange giant named Aldebaran, the fiery eye of Taurus. This star is 40 times the width of the sun, so if you could place it where the sun is in our sky, its surface would extend almost to the orbit of Mercury, which appears right next to it now but is actually 65 light years away from the star whose name means “the follower.” Our first man-made deep sky probe, Pioneer 10, will reach this star in about 2 million years.

By the middle of June, the entire summer triangle will once again be visible, having cleared the eastern horizon by 11 p.m. You know Earth has completed one more orbit around the sun and summer is once again poised to burst forth when you see this configuration of stars at this time of night.

Through a telescope you can again view some favorites in this part of our sky, including the Ring Nebula, formed by the explosion of a star similar to the Sun about 7,000 years ago. This giant ring already spans 1 light year and will continue to expand for about 10,000 years when it will fade out and blend into the interstellar medium. In a sense you are looking 5 billion years into the future when you view this phenomenon. You can also see Albireo, a beautiful blue and gold double star located about 400 light years away marking the head of Cygnus. Then you can see the North American nebula in Cygnus and the Veil nebula, a supernova remnant from a cataclysmic explosion about 50,000 years ago.

Look just below this great triangle to see Delphinius the Dolphin. It is easy to picture a heavenly dolphin jumping out of the cosmic ocean when you view this faint but distinct group of stars.

JUNE HIGHLIGHTS

June 1: The nearly full moon is a few degrees above Saturn tonight.

June 2: Full moon is at 12:19 p.m. This is also called the Strawberry or Rose Moon.

June 3: A double shadow transit occurs on Jupiter. The George Ellery Hale 200-inch Mt. Palomar telescope was dedicated on this day in 1948.

June 5: In 1989, Voyager 2 began observations of Neptune.

June 9: Last quarter moon is at 11:42 a.m.

June 13: The Beehive cluster glows just below Venus, which is within 10 degrees of Jupiter.

June 16: New moon is at 10:05 a.m. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

June 19: The waxing crescent moon passes near Venus and Jupiter.

June 21: The summer solstice is at 12:38 p.m.

June 24: First quarter moon is at 7:02 a.m.

June 28: Saturn is about 2 degrees below the moon tonight.

June 29: George Ellery Hale was born in 1868.

June 30: Venus and Jupiter are at their closest, just one-third of a degree apart. In 1908, a comet or asteroid exploded about 5 miles above Tunguska in Siberia with a force about 1,000 times that of the first atomic bomb. The impact leveled 80 million trees over 1,000 square miles but did not leave a crater.

Bernie Reim of Wells is co-director of the Astronomical Society of Northern New England.

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