The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-07-09
JULY SKIES.
The Sister Planets and the Far-Off
 Suns.

l The Sister Planets and the Far-Off
 Surs.
 The planet Mercury. which on the Sd
 of the month will reach it's greatest
 eastern elongation, will be in the con- stellation Cancer throughout the entire
 month. Venus will be in Gemim and
 cease to be an evening star, but about
 the middle of the month begin to act
 as morning star, though since 1t rises
 when the morning twilight is far ad- vanced, 1t will not be in q favorable situation for observation. On the Sth of the month Venus will be in inferior i conjunction with the sun that is, in q straight line between the sun and the earth, and consequently invisible. The interval between tW'D conjunctions of the same kind of a olanet Is called it's synodc perIod, which in the case of Ve-
 nus s 5St days while her sidereal period the time of complete revolution about the sun-is only 225 days.
 Consequently Venus will remain a morning star for 292 days and then be-
 come an evening star for as many days. Since Venus becomes morning star on July 8, 1t will continue to act In that ca pacity until April 26 of the coming year. Mars is in Taurus and acts as a morn
 ing star. It will rise about o'clock in the morning. Of all the larger plan- cts Mars has the longest synodic period namely, 7S0 days. Of the numerous pe- culiarities of Mars the fact of the peri cd of the inner satellite Phobos being the shorest in the whole solar system is one. Phobos revolves about it's pri- mary in the remarkably short time of seven hours and thirty y-nine minutes, which is not one-third of the day of Mars. It is owing to this fact that 1t rises in the west every night for the in- habitants of Mars, if there are any, and sets in the east after about five and a half hours. Jupiter is in Scorpio, great ly enhancing by its luster the intrinsic beauty of that constellation. At about 9 o'clock in the July evenings it is on the meridian, setting about o'clock in the beginning of the month and few mnutes past midnight at the end. Not far from Jupiter, toward the east, the fine planet saturn shines in the neigh boring constellation of Sagittarius. It sets about two hours later than Jupiter, thus being visible nearly throughout the night.
 Of all the consultations that are on the meridian at about 9 o'clock in the July evenings the most striking is Seor- pic, or Scorpius, the principal contgu- ration of whose stars is a boys kite with a long tail to it. Its brightest star Is Antares, of the first magnitude, and in its intense redness resembles the planet Mars, whence it's name, which means "equal to Ares" the last word being the Greek name for Mars. An tareS is a fine double star with green companion, which. however, can be seen only with a more powerful tele- scope About 9 degrees northwest of Antares is Beta Scorpii, or Graffius which, too, is double star. Gamma is about twenty degrees west of Antares, but this star encroaches upon the con stelation Libra so closely as, strictly speaking, to belong to it, In fact uranographers there prevails | some confusion in regard to the bound | ary of these two constellations. The | tail of the kite streams down far to the south and east. The presence of the 1 planet Jupiter, not far from | Beta renders this beautiful star pie | ture still more imposing
 Northeast of Scorpio we see the ex- tensve constellation Ophuchus, or the l Serpentholder ,grasping with both hands | the Serpent, long constellation, form | ing large semi-circular arc. The head | of Ophiuchus is marked by rather | arge triangle, the northernmost vertex | of which is Alpha Ophiuchi, or Ras Ala ghus, the other two being Beta and |