The Night Sky This Month – July 2026
(Looking for last month’s ‘Night Sky’? Find it at this link…)
Venus appears in the evening sky, Saturn rises after midnight, and Mars emerges in Taurus in the eastern sky before sunrise. ‘Milky Way season’ gets fully underway as the thick band of our galaxy moves into view in the late evening hours. And a modest meteor shower arrives this month, running from the 15th until early August, foreshadowing the splendid Perseid meteor shower coming up next month. Here’s what to see in the night sky this month…
2 July 2026. Before sunrise, look eastward to see Mars rising about 5o southeast of the Pleiades star cluster with Aldebaran and the Hyades below. Mars shines at magnitude +1.3 and spans just 4.5”, still too small to reveal much detail in a telescope. The planet is slightly fainter than Aldebaran but of similar hue.
4 July. If you have a telescope handy, look again to Mars to see the tiny disk of Uranus just 0.1o to the north.
6 July. Earth reaches aphelion, its furthest point from the Sun, at a distance of 152,087,774 km. That’s 3.4% farther than at perihelion in early January.
7 July. Last Quarter Moon, 19:29 UT
9 July. Look westward at dusk to see Venus just one degree northeast of Regulus. The planet has brightened to magnitude -4.1 and appears in a telescope as a gibbous disk about 17” across.
11 July. Back to the morning sky, look again eastward to see Mars between the Hyades cluster in Taurus and a waning crescent Moon. It’s a lovely part of the sky to sweep with binoculars early on a northern summer morning.
14 July. New Moon, 09:44 UT
16 July. Look for a slender lunar crescent Moon about 7o west of Venus and just over 1o south of the star Regulus in the western evening sky after sunset. The Moon and Venus remain close on the 17th also.
20 July. A nearly first-quarter Moon lies 3o southwest of Spica in the southwestern evening sky.
21 July. First Quarter Moon, 11:06 UT
24 July. The fattening gibbous Moon passes 2.5o southeast of the bright red supergiant Antares in the constellation Scorpius in the southern evening sky.
27 July. Saturn, which now rises near midnight local time, reaches its first stationary point. It now moves westward (in retrograde) against the background stars for the next 4.5 months. The planet now enters its best observing period over the next several months. It shines near magnitude +0.7 and its disk spans 18”.
29 July. Full Moon, 14:36 UT (the full ‘Buck Moon’ or ‘Berry Moon’).
29-31 July. The Delta Aquariid meteor shower peaks. This annual event favors observers in the southern hemisphere and southerly latitudes in the northern hemisphere, though all observers can see some of these slow-moving meteors. The Delta Aquariids appear to radiate from a point near the star Skat (delta Aquarii) in the constellation Aquarius. The shower peaks around July 29-30, but unlike most meteor showers, the Delta Aquariids lack a sharp maximum which means meteors are visible from mid-July through early August. The maximum hourly rate can reach 15-20 meteors in dark sky.