June sky at night — click on the image below to see a larger version

The best of the planets during June is Venus, but you will have to get up before the Sun rises in order to see it.

At the start of the month the planet is a brilliant morning star low in the east, at an impressive magnitude of -4.2 (like golf handicaps, the lower the number the brighter the object). It will then fade, but only slightly, reaching -4.0 by the month’s end. If you are only going to wake up early once, try the mornings of the 19th and 20th when the crescent Moon will hang just above Venus.

Venus is also joined throughout the month by a second visitor, Mars. The pair make their closest approach also on the 19th, when they will be separated by two degrees, about four times the diameter of the full Moon.

The Red Planet is on the far side of its orbit from the Earth, and so appears far from impressive. That said, with careful study with the naked eye you might be able to convince yourself that you can see its distinctive orange-red hue. The situation will improve slowly over the coming months, but for now Mars remains an object of interest only to naked-eye observers, showing little detail in the telescope.

The outer planets are in the middle of a changing of the guard. Saturn is now slipping firmly into the evening twilight. In the southeast morning sky, though, Jupiter is bright in the constellation of Capricornus, brighter than anything except Venus. A small telescope will show the dramatic patterns of belts and spots on the surface of the giant planet alongside the brightest moons, but observers should look a little farther away this month, too. Nudging a telescope just half a degree to the north of Jupiter will show Neptune — it is an ideal opportunity for adding this pale-blue disk to your catalogue of observed planets.

June offers few hours for stargazing, with the sky from the northern latitudes of the UK never becoming truly dark. This can be a blessing though, as a bright sky hides the fainter stars, making it easier to recognise the patterns of the constellations. The eastern sky is dominated by the Summer Triangle of three bright stars, marked on our map; Altair in the constellation of Aquila, Vega in the constellation of Lyra, and Deneb, the brightest star in Cygnus, the swan. Cygnus in particular is a glorious sight, with the longest axis of its cross stretching along the summer Milky Way.

Looking toward Cygnus we are looking through the disc of our own galaxy; as well as the myriad of stars, dark dust lanes are clearly visible. “Dust” to an astronomer means small particles of silicon and graphite, each smaller than a sand grain but between them substantial enough to block the light from distant stars. The largest conglomeration in this part of the sky is the Cygnus Rift — the closest counterpart in the northern sky to the more famous southern Coal Sack.

A dark sky is necessary to see the finer details of the Milky Way, but anyone with even the smallest telescope or a steadily-held pair of binoculars can enjoy the best of Cygnus’s sights. The bright star at the other end of the cross to Deneb is Albireo, one of the finest double stars in the sky. The primary is a golden yellow, in contrast to the pale blue of the companion.