This may be a great year to see summertime meteors.

As evening twilight darkens the July sky, a brilliant orange star rises in the southeast. This is actually not a star, but the planet Mars.

The Ring, the Dumbbell, the Eskimo, the Helix. These lyrical names are assigned to deep sky objects known as planetary nebulae . Hubble Space Telescope images of these display some of the most beautiful objects in the night sky.

In your childhood, you may recall playing with a Spirograph. That’s a popular toy comprising a set of interlocking geared shapes that can be variously situated on paper to trace elaborate geometric patterns. Nature is a master at creating geometric patterns — from the whorls of a nautilus to the petals of a dahlia. Nature is no less masterful in space — one can find a superb example 800 million miles or 1.2 billion kilometers away, at the north pole of Saturn. There, we find a surprising

These days, most of us spend our evenings retreating to our favorite corners of the Internet. Our chosen cyber spaces are often unique, different from those of our family members, coworkers, and neighbors. Each of us jokes about distinct factions of pop culture. It’s easy to feel disconnected, like there are no unifying experiences left. And yet, if we crave connections and shared experiences, all we have to do is find a dark spot and tilt our heads to the sky.

“The Roman god, Jupiter, drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief. But his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature,” as noted in a NASA press release. So, too, is NASA’s Juno space probe revealing the true nature of the gas-giant planet, Jupiter.

According to National Geographic, ninety-nine percent of the population of the U.S. and Europe can’t see the Milky Way from their homes. That makes many of us here on the Western Slope very special! Feels good to be part of the one percent, doesn’t it?

What’s that brilliant object in the western evening twilight? An Airplane? A bright star? No. It’s Venus , Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor!

Billions of years in the future, our Sun will become a red giant star. Its diameter will extend beyond the orbit of Venus and likely even Earth. However, there are even larger stars…the supergiants.

Famed astrophysicist Carl Sagan once remarked, “We are made of star stuff,” meaning that everything material we know is composed of chemical elements whose origins lie in the cosmos.