June 2025 Stargazing Guide
Greetings Junior Scientists, Scientists and citizens of this great big weird, wild and wonderful world in which we live. As always, I’m your humble science communicator, the great Orbax, coming to you from the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph and I’d like to welcome you to our June 2025 Star Gazing Guide.
With the solstice on June 20th we officially welcome in Summer but also experience the least amount of daylight hours that we'll get all year. As a matter of fact sunrise on June 20th is at 5:40 a.m. and sunset's at 9:06 p.m. giving us only about 8 1/2 hours of stargazing. That said, what should we expect to see?
Well this month we gaze upon the Planet of Robots, spy the brightest star in the sky and learn about the first day of Summer! All this and more when we just take some time...
to look up.
Just after sunset this month look high in the west. Look look so high that you're almost looking directly above you and you should see a very bright star. This star is Arcturus, the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere and the fourth brightest star visible from Earth. Arcturus is a red giant 36.7 light years away from us. And while it has approximately the same mass as our Sun it's actually 25.4 times its size and 170 times more luminous.
Arcturus is part of the constellation Bootes, the Herdsman.
Bootes is the 13th largest constellation and was one of the original 48 constellations cataloged by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE. Bootes is known for containing a prominent asterism known as the Kite!
On these short June nights Arcturus and Bootes will continue to drop down towards the horizon until sunrise.
While Saturn and Jupiter will be difficult to see this month our June mornings will be dominated by Venus shining brightly in the East low in the horizon just before sunrise. Mars, the planet of robots, will be visible just after sunset low in the West and will set around midnight this month. For a special treat look West on June 16th and 17th where Mars will appear right next to Regulus in the constellation of Leo.
Our full Moon this month takes place on June 11. The Ojibwe of the Great Lakes region call this moon Ode'imini-giizis, The Strawberry Moon, which was also a common name used by settlers. For the Cree Nation it’s the Egg Laying Moon Opiniyawiwipisim, since the wild water-fowl tend to lay eggs at this time of the year. The Mohawks call it "the Fruits are Small Moon" while the Cherokee tribes call it “the Green Corn Moon”, both signifying that the crops are still young & growing. Our Mi'kmaw friends on the east coast refer to the June Full Moon as the Trees Fully-leafed Moon, Nipniku’s.
The first day of summer is June 20th and it's defined by the summer solstice. The Earth has an axis that we say it rotates about... it's like an imaginary line between the north and the south poles. It takes 24 hours for one full rotation, which is a day. Now this axis isn't perfectly perpendicular to the plane of our orbit around the Sun, it's actually tipped at 23.5 degrees. The winter solstice in December marks the day of the year the north pole is actually its furthest possible distance from the sun. The summer solstice on June 20th however is the day that the north pole is tipped closest towards the Sun, and as a result the northern hemisphere experiences the most daylight hours that it receives all year. This is often referred to as the longest day of the year, which is kind of confusing since the day only ever has 24 hours. In reality it's actually the day that we experience the most daylight hours in a year. As we head towards winter, the daylight hours will now begin to decrease in length while the nighttime hours will extend for even more stargazing. And with a New Moon on June 25th we'll have dark, but very short, night skies taking us through to the end of the month.
Well there you have it junior scientists!
Another month gazing into the speckled ceiling of Earth.
And while the weather may be nicer, these shorter nights fill us with purpose. Curiosity! A need to wonder, to explore and to discover.
And all we need to do to fulfill that purpose is take some time... to look up.
Boom. See you next month junior scientists and don't forget to have a science-tastic day.
Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist Dr Glynis Perrett for her help preparing our star gazing guide. And the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.