Watch bright meteors flash across the Milky Way this summer

Warm summer nights are great for staying up late to stargaze. So keep tabs on the weather forecast throughout the season, because there is plenty to see in the sky.
Watch for some of the brightest planets to be visible in the predawn and evening skies during the summer months. Plus, see the core of our Milky Way Galaxy crossing the sky each night, and keep a sharp eye out during two remarkable meteor showers, the first of which could be of alien origin and the second that counts as one of the best of the year.
Here is our guide to the astronomical sights on display for Canada in Summer 2025:
June 20/21 — Summer Solstice and Longest Day of the Year
June 22 — Venus near the Crescent Moon (predawn)
June 26 — Mercury near the Crescent Moon (early evening)
June 29 — Mars near the Crescent Moon (evening)
July 3 — Aphelion (Earth's farthest distance from the Sun for 2025)
July 10-11 — Full Buck Moon
July 16 — Saturn near the Gibbous Moon
July 21 to 23 — Crescent Moon passes Venus and then Jupiter (predawn)
July 28 — Mars near the Crescent Moon (evening)
July 29 to 31 — Southern delta Aquariid Meteor Shower peaks
August 8-9 — Full Sturgeon Moon
August 11 & 12 — Saturn near the Gibbous Moon
August 12 — Jupiter and Venus very close together (predawn)
August 12 — Perseid Meteor Shower peaks
August 19 & 20 — Crescent Moon passes Jupiter and Venus (predawn)
August 26 — Mars near the Crescent Moon (evening)
September 7-8 — Full Corn Moon
September 16 to 19 — Crescent Moon passes Jupiter then Venus (predawn)
September 21 — Saturn Opposition (closest, brightest for the year)
September 22 — Fall Equinox
Visit our for an in-depth look at the Summer Forecast, tips to plan for it, and much more!
At 2:42 UTC on June 21, the Sun will reach its highest point in the sky in the northern hemisphere for this year.
This 'pause' in the position of the Sun in the sky will mark the start of northern Astronomical Summer for 2025. This occurs just after midnight on the 21st for Newfoundland, but in the hours before midnight on the 20th for the rest of Canada.
This solargraph image records the path of the Sun across the sky each day from summer solstice to winter solstice in 2023, interrupted only by cloudy skies. (Bret Culp)
This is also the longest day of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere, at least with respect to how much daylight we see.
However, due to the timing of this solstice, something special happens for about a third of our country. From eastern Ontario to the Atlantic Coast, both June 20 and June 21 will have exactly the same amount of daylight, down to the second. That means there will be two longest days of the year!
For the rest of the country, June 21 will be around one second shorter than June 20. So, it may still feel like there's two longest days of the year.
To start off the season, early risers can spot the planets Venus and Saturn in the eastern predawn sky. For evening stargazers, Mercury and Mars will be visible in the western sky in the hours just after sunset.
Simulated views of the eastern predawn and western evening skies on June 21, 2025. Note: the Moon is shown larger than it actually appears. (Stellarium)
While the exact timing of when it rises and its exact position in the sky will change, Venus will continue to show up as the 'morning star' each day this summer. Similarly, each evening, Mars will emerge from twilight to shine there, getting closer and closer to the horizon with each 'return'.
At the same time, Mercury will only remain visible in the west until early July. After that, it gets a bit too close to the Sun, but will pop up again in the predawn sky starting in the second week of August. Meanwhile Saturn will rise earlier and earlier, and thus will be visible for longer each night, as we approach the planet's "opposition" — its closest and brightest — at the end of the season.
Even though we 'lost' Jupiter from our evening sky around the end of May, the giant planet can be 'found' again starting in mid-July. You'll have to get up early to see it, though, as it will appear in the morning sky instead, starting just before sunrise, and then rising earlier and earlier as the season progresses.
Watch closely in the predawn sky during the second week of August, but especially on the morning of the 12th, to see Jupiter pass by Venus close enough that the two planets will appear to nearly touch.
Jupiter and Venus pass close enough to appear to touch in the mid-August predawn sky. (Stellarium/Scott Sutherland)
Also be sure to look up throughout the season to see the Moon close by to these planets. The Crescent Moon will be near Venus on the morning of June 22, Mercury in the evening of June 26, and then Mars on June 29.
In July, the Waning Gibbous Moon will cross the sky with Saturn on the 16th, the Waning Crescent Moon will pass by Venus and Jupiter from the 21st through the 23rd, and we'll see the Waxing Crescent Moon near Mars on the 28th.
This same pattern repeats in August and September, with the dates shifted a few days earlier each time.
For August, we'll see Saturn and the Gibbous Moon on the 11th and 12th, the Waning Crescent Moon passing Jupiter and Venus on the 19th and 20th, and the Waxing Crescent Moon with Mars on the 26th. Then in September, it'll be the 8th and 9th for Saturn and the Gibbous Moon, and the 16th through the 19th for the Crescent Moon passing Jupiter and Venus in the predawn sky.
On the second to last night of the season, September 20-21, look for Saturn in the southern sky. The ringed planet will be at its brightest, as this night marks Opposition, when the Sun, Earth, and Saturn align perfectly.
Saturn centred in the southern sky on the night of September 20-21, when it is at its closest and brightest of the year. Inset is a simulated telescopic view of the planet and several of its brightest moons visible (at 1:45 a.m. EDT), which are numbered and labelled. (Stellarium/Scott Sutherland)
This is the planet's closest distance to Earth for the year, so it's a great time to grab a good pair of binoculars or a telescope to see the planet for yourself. Also, as we're 6 months past the March 2025 'ring crossing', we can once-again glimpse the planet's beautiful ring system glittering in the sunlight.
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On July 3, at exactly 3:55 p.m. EDT, our planet will reach its farthest distance from the Sun for this year. This is known as aphelion (pronounced ah-FEEL-ee-uhn).
At that time, Earth will be around 152,087,733 km from the Sun, or nearly 2.5 million km farther than its average distance of 149,597,871 km (1 'astronomical unit').
This particular aphelion is actually one of the closest we've seen in decades.
The average aphelion distance between Earth and the Sun is 152,097,701 km. However, as the other planets exert their gravitational influence on us, our orbit around the Sun changes slightly year-to-year. This means that our distances to the Sun at perihelion (in January) and aphelion (in July) also change. Thus, depending on the year, we could have a 'farthest aphelion' (or 'farthest farthest distance') or even a 'closest aphelion' (or 'closest farthest distance').
This year we will be 9,957 km closer to the Sun than usual. That is Earth's 'closest farthest distance' from the Sun since 2001, when our aphelion distance was 10,122 km closer than average.
There are three Full Moons in Summer 2025 — the July 10-11 Buck Moon, the August 8-9 Sturgeon Moon, and the September 7-8 Corn Moon.
The three Full Moons of Summer 2025. (NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Scott Sutherland)
After the 'micromoons' of spring, and the upcoming 'supermoons' of fall, these will be all 'average' sized Full Moons.
In September, there will be a Total Lunar Eclipse on the night of the Full Moon, similar to the March 13-14 eclipse that was seen from across Canada. However, due to the timing of this one, we won't see it from Canada. It will only be directly visible from Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia. There could be livestreams of this celestial alignment, though, so keep an eye out for updates on the event.
DON'T MISS:
Every summer, we see two 'major' meteor showers, as Earth crosses a couple of overlapping streams of comet debris in space. As we pass through them, the bits of dust and gravel within these streams produce meteors streaking across our night skies.
The first of these is the Southern delta Aquariids, which begin on July 12 as we encounter debris attributed to 96P/Machholz — an odd 'sungrazer' comet with a weird chemical makeup that could (maybe) indicate that it originates from beyond our solar system.
For the first two weeks of the delta Aquariids, observers typically see only one or two meteors every hour, which can be traced back to a point in the sky in the constellation Aquarius. These meteors show up starting around 10:30 to 11 p.m. each night, and can appear anywhere overhead from then until morning twilight.
The radiant of the Southern delta Aquariid meteor shower, early in the morning on July 31, 2025. The lunar phase during the peak (inset, top right) is the Waxing Crescent Moon. (Stellarium/Scott Sutherland)
However, in the final few days of July, the number of delta Aquariid meteors jumps up, roughly doubling each night until they reach around 20-25 per hour on the nights of July 31 and August 1.
After that, the numbers drop off again, but a few per hour can still be spotted each night up until August 23.
Although not counted among the strongest showers of the year, delta Aquariid meteors still tend to be reasonably bright.
In 2025, the timing of this meteor shower is fairly good compared to the phase of the Moon. Ideal conditions would be having a New Moon around the 31st or 1st, but this year there is a Waxing Crescent Moon and First Quarter Moon in the sky on those nights. Still, the best time to view the delta Aquariids is in the hours after midnight, when the radiant is higher in the southern sky, and that will be after the Moon sets on the nights of the peak.
Earth plunges into the second debris stream starting on July 17. Left behind by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, the meteoroids from this stream put on one of the best meteor displays in the northern hemisphere — the Perseid meteor shower.
The location of the Perseids radiant in the northeast, at midnight on August 12-13, 2025. The phase of the moon is shown inset, top right, and the meteors in that portion of the sky are more 'washed out' due to the moonlight. (Stellarium/Scott Sutherland)
As with the delta Aquariids, the Perseids start off fairly quiet for the first two weeks or so. The number of meteors then quickly ramps up in early August. During the peak — on the night of August 12-13 — the shower is capable of delivering up to 100 meteors per hour. Sometimes even more!
The Perseids also have the distinction of having the greatest number of fireball meteors compared to any other meteor shower of the year. A 'fireball' is any meteor that is at least as bright as the planet Venus, and they can be visible for hundreds of kilometres around, even during a Full Moon or from under severe urban light pollution. If you spot a fireball in the sky, try to remember as much about it as possible — what direction you were facing at the time, where it started and where it ended, how many seconds it lasted, if it appeared to break up, and if you heard any noise associated with it — and report your sighting to the American Meteor Society.
Watch: Perseid fireball captured on camera
Click here to view the video
The Perseids radiant — the position the meteors appear to originate from in the sky — is a special one. Most meteor shower radiants rise and set along with the stars. However, positioned in the northern sky as it is, the Perseids radiant never sets at this time of year. The meteor shower continues day and night, and we just have to wait until it is sufficiently dark for a chance to spot the meteors streaking overhead.
The peak of this year's shower falls just a few days after the Full Moon, so we will have a Waning Gibbous Moon in the sky for most of the night. Unfortunately, this will cause many of the dimmer meteors to become washed out by moonlight, leaving only the brightest for use to see. For the best chance of spotting meteors, seek out the clearest, darkest skies in your area, and keep the Moon out of your direct line of sight.
Given the less-than-ideal viewing conditions during the peak of the Perseids, the best time to get out to see summer meteor showers could be on the night of July 31 to August 1. At that time, the rates from both the delta Aquariids and the Perseids should roughly match, and with the Moon setting around midnight, the hours after should be dark enough to spy meteors from both showers crisscrossing in the sky overhead.
The radiant of the Southern delta Aquariid meteor shower, at midnight local time, during the peak of the shower on the night of July 31-August 1, 2025. The Perseid meteor shower will also be active at this time, with meteors originating from the northeast. The lunar phase during the peak (inset, top right) is the First Quarter Moon. (Stellarium/Scott Sutherland)
READ MORE:
"This is the time of year when the Milky Way is visible as a faint band of hazy light arching across the sky all night," says NASA. "You just need to be under dark skies away from bright city lights to see it."
The central core of our Milky Way galaxy is a mixture of bright stars and dark bands of dust in this photo captured from one of the best dark-sky locations on Earth. (Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn, used with permission)
"What you're looking at is the bright central core of our home galaxy, seen edge-on, from our position within the galaxy's disk," NASA explained.
The galactic core is visible in our skies throughout much of summer. You don't need to travel to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile to experience it, though. A trip out of the city, to get out from under urban light pollution, and a bit of time to let your eyes adjust to the dark, might be all you need. Look up your local chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), and check out any star parties they have on their calendar of events.
At 2:19 p.m. EDT on September 22, the Sun will cross the celestial equator headed from north to south, marking the fall equinox for the northern hemisphere.
Once we transition to Astronomical Fall, get ready for meteor shower season, when there's at least one meteor shower (but often more than one) active each and every night!
Click here to view the video

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Elon Musk promises more risky launches after sixth Starship failure

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White House Aims To Halt Fantastical NASA Missions Across Solar System

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More (Photo by NASA/APL/SwRI via Getty Images) Getty Images 'With New Horizons,' he says, 'there are a lot of important scientific objectives still ahead, things no other spacecraft can do.' 'Terminating this mission would also represent a tragic loss of soft power projection for the U.S.' The Horizons craft, and its array of next-generation cameras and spectrometers, is exploring a region beyond Pluto that no other human-created probe has ever entered, with a treasure trove of potential discoveries waiting. 'This would be like sending a message to [Christopher] Columbus to sink his ships while they were in North America,' Stern tells me, upending a new age of discovery. 'With New Horizons, we have the power and the fuel to run this mission for another 20 years … and we have more Kuiper belt objects to explore.' The White House, in issuing its slashed budget plan for NASA, never provided a logical rationale for torpedoing some of the agency's world-leading missions to survey and image the solar system. Its inscrutable sinking of some of these vanguard voyages was unveiled with the terseness of a telegram: 'Operating missions that have completed their prime missions (New Horizons and Juno) and the follow-on mission to OSIRIX-REx, OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer, are eliminated.' The asteroid-hunter OSIRIS spacecraft, shown here at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is one of ... More the trailblazers set to be terminated by the White House. (Photo by Bruce Weaver / AFP) (Photo by BRUCE WEAVER/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images The OSIRIS spacecraft, which had been slated to rendezvous with the closely approaching Apophis asteroid ahead, is a precursor mission to defending the Earth's eight billion citizens against doomsday cosmic strikes by colossal comets or asteroids of the future. The robotic photographer Juno has snapped an endless kaleidoscope of imagery as it floats around Jupiter. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have posted raw impressions of the orb and its moons and invited 'citizen scientists' to Photoshop and launch them across the cybersphere. In the process, they are becoming part of the spacefaring civilization that is spreading out across the globe. Model of the $1-billion Juno spacecraft, which is now orbiting and photographing Jupiter (Photo by ... More) Getty Images During its own space odyssey, New Horizons has astounded stargazers, students and scholars worldwide with its technicolor panoramas of Pluto, covered in surreal ice-fields and cryo-volcanoes, and its age-old companion Charon. The twin netherworlds—named after the mythical Greek god of the underworld and the pilot who shuttled souls across the river Styx—circle more than five billion kilometers distant from the sun, along an orbit that Stern's Pluto expedition took nine years to reach. Now, even as it whizzes beyond all of the classical planets, New Horizons, and its future, has entered the purgatory of potential excommunication by mission controllers—and their masters—six worlds away. The New Horizons spacecraft, now speeding through the outer solar system, could be jettisoned under ... More a White House plan that would destroy American leadership in planetary science missions. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images) Heritage Images via Getty Images 'This is a vast and tragic mistake,' Stern says, 'because the issue is larger than just NASA, it also affects U.S. world leadership [and] responsible government that protects taxpayers from waste like this.' The administration's crash-and-burn dismissal of the solar system's trailblazing robotic discoverers has triggered trepidation across NASA, whose ranks of pioneering scientists are likewise set to be culled. Within NASA, Alan Stern is a pole star of cutting-edge exploration, helping guide more than two dozen missions. After his New Horizons spacecraft rendezvoused with Pluto, the agency bestowed its highest honor on him - the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. 'Stern led the team that returned remarkable imagery and other data from the Pluto system last summer, generating headlines worldwide and setting a record for the farthest world ever explored,' NASA's leaders said. "New Horizons represents the best of humanity and reminds us of why we explore,' added Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science. "The first flyby of Pluto is a remarkable achievement.' Being given the chance to lead the close encounter with Pluto, Stern said on accepting the award, 'has been the greatest honor of my lifetime.' Around the same time, NASA film-makers paid tribute to Stern, his 2000+ Pluto mission colleagues, and the target of their interplanetary expedition in the captivating documentary ' The Year of Pluto .' Stern has himself chronicled his trek across the twilight reaches of the star system in a stream of fascinating books, including Pluto and Charon: Ice Worlds on the Ragged Edge of the Solar System and Chasing New Horizons, and in a torrent of acclaimed papers . Scholar Stern predicts that if the White House's proposed death sentence for flotillas of pathfinding space missions is actually carried out, that would mark the decline and fall of NASA's planetary science breakthroughs, and the comparative rise of its competitors in the renewed space race of the 2020s. If NASA's funding and inter-planet journeys are decimated, he tells me, 'These cuts will absolutely destroy U.S. leadership in all the space sciences.' 'This is tragically misguided.' The potential death knell for an armada of space discovery missions has been reverberating not just across NASA, but also throughout the U.S. universities that help conceive or design these flights. 'Certainly termination of the New Horizons mission would be terrible,' says Kip Hodges , who as founding director of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration helped transform the university into one of the top American space studies centers. 'This a real frontier mission at this point,' he tells me in an interview, 'delivering important new information about distant parts of our Sun's heliosphere.' Congress has the power to save NASA and its leading-edge robotic explorers across the solar system ... More (Illustration by Tobias Roetsch/Future Publishing via Getty Images) Future Publishing via Getty Images Professor Hodges , one of the top space scholars in the U.S., predicts that the Swords of Damocles now hanging above New Horizons and other new-frontier flights could still be lifted. If the White House plan to cut away at NASA and its revolutionary planetary scouting missions were enacted as is, he predicts, 'a great many folks in industry, the NASA labs, and academia will be disappointed.' Yet he adds that 'the budget for NASA evolves over several stages,' with the president's initial proposal just one of competing models—one that could be rejected as the Senate and House of Representatives look afresh at NASA's missions, goals and funding. After the twin chambers reach a consensus on reshaping NASA for the next phase of its evolution, Professor Hodges adds, 'Quite often, the appropriated budget is not the president's budget.' That means space aficionados across America who seek to overturn the president's capital sentence on NASA's boundary-breaking missions have a clear channel of recourse, Stern says. Would-be petitioners for a reprieve, he advises, 'should contact their elected representatives in Congress and tell them this is a huge mistake.'

Forbes

18 hours ago

• Forbes

When And Where To See June's Stargazing Highlight On Monday

A crescent Moon with the Pleiades below-right. If you're up early on Monday, June 23, you'll be rewarded with one of the most elegant sights the sky has to offer this month — a slender crescent moon close to a sparkling cluster of stars called the Pleiades. Here's everything you need to know about when and where to see them. Where And When To Look This is a celestial encounter that lacks convenience. To see it, you'll need to head outside about an hour before sunrise and look toward the east-northeast horizon. As the sky lightens into dawn, you'll see a slender 6%-illuminated waning crescent moon. Just above it will be the Pleiades — also known as the Seven Sisters or Messier 45 — barely half a degree away. That's less than the width of an outstretched little finger held against the sky. You'll also see Venus to the right of the pair, shining brilliantly at magnitude -4.1. Monday, June 23: Crescent Moon And The Pleiades What You'll See The moon won't be particularly easy to see at first, thanks to only a slither of it being lit by the sun — you may need binoculars to spot it. If you need help, first find Venus, then look to its lower-left, slightly closer to the horizon. Once you do find it, you may notice its darkened night side softly illuminated by Earthshine — sunlight reflecting off our planet's oceans, clouds and ice caps. Just above it and to the right, the Pleiades will sparkle like glitter, with six or seven stars visible to the naked eye (and many more through binoculars). While the moon is about 238,000 miles away and Venus is about 150 times farther, the stars of the Pleiades lie roughly 444 light-years from Earth. What you won't see is Uranus. Despite it being about halfway between the moon and Venus, it's far too small to see with anything other than a large telescope. Earthshine on the crescent moon. (Photo by Frederic Larson/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images) Observing Tips Most people immediately think of a telescope when they think about astronomy. It's not necessary for this event. You'll see much more just by using your naked eyes. However, a pair of binoculars is always useful when stargazing, allowing you to zoom in on the Pleiades and on the Earthshine-lit lunar surface. Choose an observing location with a clear, unobstructed view to the eastern horizon, if possible, away from city lights — though light pollution makes zero difference when observing the planets and the moon. What's Next In The Night Sky The next standout event comes on June 25 with the arrival of a new moon — a prime opportunity to see the Milky Way in all its summer glory. And don't miss June 26, when a young crescent moon will join Mercury in the western post-sunset sky. For exact timings, use a sunrise and sunset calculator for where you are, Stellarium Web for a sky chart and Night Sky Tonight: Visible Planets at Your Location for positions and rise/set times for planets. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.