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| THE COLONY NEWS | JULY 2024 | 19 | THE COLONY NEWS | JULY 2024 | 19 In Memoriam Everett Millican Judith Lange Billie Denney Millie Mc Glashan By Mike Vergara, 951-473-5806 Ah, July. Warm summer nights. Fireworks. But alas, no planets unless you're a night owl or an early riser. We won't have any evening planets until mid-August when Saturn shows up in the east. Right now, almost all the planets are early-morning objects. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing going on up there. Until the mosquitoes got out of control, Susan and I would sit on the driveway in the evenings and chat with our neighbors. I watched the sky, looking for the first visible star. Usually, I could find Vega or Deneb twinkling in the sky soon after sunset. Vega and Deneb, along with Altair, make up an asterism known as the "Summer Triangle." This nickname was given to these stars by British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore. Earlier though, it was known by Pacific Island cultures as the "Navigator's Triangle," and they used it and Crux (the Southern Cross) to navigate the trackless waters of the Pacific Ocean. The people who knew how to do this were called Wayfinders. There are stars in the Triangle that point almost directly north and south, and the other stars were used as directional references to the inhabited islands of the Pacific. Isn't it amazing that people could use just the sky to guide them? On July 4, the Earth will be at aphelion in its orbit around the sun. Aphelion means that the Earth is at its farthest point from the sun. Earth's average distance from the sun is 93 million miles. At aphelion, the distance is 94.5 million miles. This month's full moon, known as the "Full Buck Moon," is on July 21. Native Americans in the Midwest called it the Buck Moon because it's around this time that their antlers are starting to grow. To find where the planets and constellations are, visit http://skymaps.com/index.html. From there you can print your own map of the sky for the month. Clear skies! July Night Sky July Night Sky