Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
Summer brings a lot of seasonal enjoyments: Pool days, great produce, fireworks, ice cream, and superlative sky watching.
There are a few reasons why the warmer months make for better nighttime viewing in the Northern Hemisphere.
The first and most obvious is, it’s warmer. Skies do tend to be clearer when it’s cold (depending on where you live), but sitting outside for hours at a time when the temperatures are below freezing is not – in my opinion anyway – the most enjoyable experience.
The second is a positional thing. During the winter, the Earth faces the outer edge of the galaxy, which doesn’t do much for us here in the Northern Hemisphere from a skywatching point of view. During the summer, by contrast, we’re pointing directly into the Milky Way, which provides a lot more in terms of space action.
The third is about timing – specifically for meteor showers, most notably the Perseids, which are the most popular meteor shower of the year due to their signature long streaks and plentiful nature. They hit their peak some time around mid-August under warm, clear skies.
There are several setbacks to summer stargazing. It gets dark later, so you have to either stay up very late or get up very early to see the best of what the skies have to offer.
This summer in particular brings several opportunities to view summer of our solar system’s brightest planets gather for conjunctions and/or alignments. One such cosmic meetup is scheduled to occur tonight when Jupiter and Venus appear in the sky about a thumb’s width apart from each other (or so it will seem).
To be clear, the Jupiter-Venus get-together is a conjunction, which is when at least two planets – and potentially more – appear very close together from our vantage point here on Earth, though in reality, they are still millions of miles away from one another up in space.
A conjunction should not be confused with a planetary alignment – AKA a “planet parade” – which is a broader term for when multiple planets gather in the same general area of the sky, creating a visible line or arc to the eye of those of us standing on Earth. Again, this is more or less an illusion, because the planets remain very far away each other.
The next planetary alignment will occur when Mercury joins the party with Venus and Jupiter June 11-15 (around June 12 will likely be the best time for spotting this phenomenon). Just after sunset, if the skies are clear, you’ll be able to see the three of them clustered together in the western portion of the sky. They will be so bright that they SHOULD be visible to the naked eye.
A note about stargazing: It’s best done on clear nights from locations that don’t have a lot of light pollution, which is something that is increasingly hard to come by.
Locally, you could try Thacher Park, but it’s still pretty close to the City of Albany, making it sub-optimal from a skywatching standpoint. If you have the ability to travel, head North to the Adirondacks. Tupper Lake, for example, is home to the Adirondack Sky Center & Observatory, which bills itself as one of the best places for stargazing in the East.
We’ll have most sunny skies and near record highs today, as the mercury creeps up toward 90 degrees.
In the headlines…
The Israeli military issued an evacuation alert in southern Lebanon today, warning people in one of the area’s largest cities of imminent strikes against the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah, a day after Israel and Iran pulled back from direct confrontation.
A U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter crashed near the Strait of Hormuz, with President Donald Trump saying the two crew members on board were “fine” after the incident involving the strategic waterway, which remains under a chokehold by Iran.
It was not immediately clear what led to the incident, which came at a time when the cease-fire in the war has grown tenuous.
The Trump administration on Monday announced it is seeking to revoke the citizenship of 17 U.S. citizens accused of immigration fraud, expanding its unprecedented denaturalization campaign.
A federal judge on Monday vacated President Trump’s $100,000 fee for employers’ H-1B visa applications for highly-skilled foreign workers.
The State Department will offer a “premium” expedited service for foreigners seeking business or tourist visas to come to the United States that will set applicants back $750 — on top of the initial fee of $185.
President Trump on Monday nominated his former personal lawyer Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general, elevating a loyal and trusted ally who as the acting attorney general has shown a willingness to execute Trump’s maximalist demands.
President Trump is launching a new effort to try to avoid paying back billions of dollars worth of tariffs he illegally collected. Legal watchers say there’s a chance the White House effort could succeed.
The president is using the slow count of mail ballots in California to renew his effort to cast doubt on election outcomes he doesn’t like, despite a lack of evidence of any widespread fraud.
Nithya Raman, a progressive Democrat who has drawn comparisons to New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, will face Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles in a two-person race in November.
Raman, 44, a City Council member and former Bass ally, was behind in the initial vote count but came back in later returns to edge out Spencer Pratt, a GOP reality TV star who lost his home in the 2025 wildfires that devastated Pacific Palisades.
San Francisco voters appear to have rejected a significant tax increase on highly paid corporate executives that had been opposed by some of the most powerful people in the tech industry.
In a crucial year to pass constitutional amendments, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal that would have freed three of six prisons from development restrictions has failed to make the $268 billion state budget.
As state lawmakers wrapped up their legislative activities for the year, some of the final bills focused on maternal care, including drug testing for pregnant patients and additional rights for expectant mothers incarcerated in prison.
According to state records, a super PAC called “Make it Cheaper” was formed on Friday to back GOP Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s bid to unseat Hochul in November.
Trump’s hardline border czar has again threatened to dispatch a surge of immigration agents to New York City, as the administration vows to press ahead with its controversial crackdown.
Border czar Tom Homan said New York City will “see more ICE agents” than ever in a deployment following a new law signed by Hochul that bans law enforcement officers from wearing masks.
The governor told POLITICO in an exclusive interview that Mamdani needs to get a handle on the Big Apple’s spending after she gave the city additional cash and backed an annual surcharge on pricey second homes.
Famous former footballers joined Mamdani, Hochul and FIFA President Gianni Infantino Monday to announce New York City will host a massive, free watch party in Central Park for the World Cup Finals.
Mamdani slammed President Trump’s role in the World Cup as players, coaches and fans arriving for the FIFA World Cup come up against the president’s hardline immigration agenda.
Trump was hailed with a chorus of boos on Monday night while attending Game 3 of the NBA finals to watch his hometown New York Knicks face off against the San Antonio Spurs.
The San Antonio Spurs earned their first win of the NBA Finals, claiming a 115-111 victory over the New York Knicks in Game 3 at Madison Square Garden.
The road team has won all three games in the series. New York still leads the series 2-1 with Game 4 scheduled for Wednesday.
“I bought my tickets for nearly $1,000,” Mamdani revealed Monday morning. “And I’ll be standing for the duration of the game.”
Some were skeptical of Mamdani’s ticket claim, as it was very, very hard to get face value tickets. In addition to the politicians, several famous faces were in attendance as well.
Rowdy Knicks fanatics clashed with cops outside Bryant Park’s Game 3 watch party Monday night – including at least one who hurled a bottle at an officer.
A dark cloud could be looming over the city’s fiscal situation, City Comptroller Mark Levine says — with a massive massive budget gap of $8.8 billion projected for next year, exceeding the mayor’s projected gap of $7.1 billion.
Levine and the CBC have reached a similar conclusion: Even as Mamdani deserves to take a victory lap for closing the immediate gap, his administration has not solved New York City’s underlying budget imbalance.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso Monday aggressively accused Assemblywoman Claire Valdez of being “beholden” to Mayor Mamdani as their Democratic primary battle heats up for the NY-07 congressional district.
New York City schools with falling enrollment will not face budget cuts this fall, continuing a policy that guarantees each school in the system receives at least as much funding as it did the year before, even if they’re expecting fewer students.
Justine Olderman, Mamdani’s choice to lead his Office of Criminal Justice, led the Bronx Defenders during a bitter internal dispute about responding to the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Mamdani has tapped a new chair for the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals, which oversees requests for zoning variances and hears appeals of city land-use decisions.
NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin told members of the City Council that the administration is weighing how to expand access to such services for minors, but must strike a balance between providing care to trans youth and avoiding federal backlash.
The MTA broke ground on a milestone to advance the extension of the Second Avenue subway into East Harlem, bringing three new stations to the neighborhood and connecting the Q line to the Metro-North and the Lexington Avenue lines at 125th Street.
The project will extend the Q from its northern terminus at 96th Street to 125th Street, providing new transit access for residents on Manhattan’s East Side. “This is something that is more than symbolic, it’s a tangible change in people’s lives,” Hochul said.
Stunning newly released renderings show key parts of Penn Station before and after its planned $8 billion overhaul — which proponents Monday predicted will make it “America’s world transit hub.’’
Forget those dreary passageways. The updated transit hub would add a grand entrance with sweeping staircases leading to an airy, glass-walled concourse.
A 41-year-old man was fatally shot aboard a city bus in the Bronx on Monday after an apparent dispute between the man and the shooter, who the man complained was talking on his phone too loudly, the authorities said.
The homeless man accused of slashing five people with a dagger in Penn Station was roaming free despite an arrest just weeks earlier in New Jersey and a conviction for an eerily similar stabbing.
The Carnegie Corporation of New York will now be called the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, a name that the organization says better reflects its work.
The ongoing battle over whether John A. Sarcone III is lawfully serving as the leader of the U.S. attorney’s office in New York’s Northern District is facing a new test in a federal criminal case involving a man accused of distributing large amounts of meth.
Four people were charged in connection with a shooting during a soccer game in Poughkeepsie in April that killed one man and hospitalized another victim, police said.
GlobalFoundries revealed recently that it has developed two different ways to protect its chips when they are used in outer space, in what is called radiation hardening, which shields components from radiation.
A Corinth mother who admitted she and her husband neglected their daughter to the point that their 3-year-old died was sentenced Monday morning to up to four years in prison.
The Erie Canal’s locks in Waterford reopened Monday, ending a three-day closure caused by an unexplained mechanical problem.
It took more than 20 years to build four affordable homes in Keene, but the point — made again and again at a celebration of the small development last week — was that no one gave up.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
