Summer 2014 is almost history. I hope you had a great summer and took time to have fun, both under the stars and under the sun.

Monday night at 10:29 p.m. is the astronomical beginning of fall with the autumnal equinox.

The Sun’s day-to-day path among the stars is poised on the celestial equator, an imaginary line in the dome of the sky that is a projection of Earth’s equator.

Since late March the sun has been north of the celestial equator giving us long days and a high sun angle.

Monday night after 10:29 p.m. the sun’s path in the sky is south of the celestial equator and the days get shorter. The angle of the sun gets lower and lower in the sky until the winter solstice in late December.

It’s true that Monday the sun rises directly in the east and sets directly in the west.

If you drive straight eastward on the highway in the early morning or straight westward in the early evening have those sunglasses handy. You’ll need them.

What’s not true about the equinox tomorrow is that it’s easier to balance an egg on its end. That’s a total fable.

Also, we will not have equal hours of day and night, at least not yet. In fact, days will still be longer than night until this coming Friday.

That’s because Earth’s atmosphere plays a trick on us. It bends sunlight. The bending of the sun’s light, called astronomical refraction, is much more pronounced when the sun is close to the horizon because the light has to plow through a thicker layer of our atmosphere.

This effect is so extreme that the sun may actually be physically below the horizon, but it appears to be above the horizon. As crazy at that sounds it’s true. That’s how we can hang on to longer days than nights for a few days after tomorrow’s equinox.

As far as stargazing goes, I enjoy it more in autumn. The humidity goes down, leaving the skies more transparent, and the mosquitoes bite less and less.

Have the bug juice with you anyway though. They love to feed on flesh in the evening twilight.

This week and next weekend are great times to stargaze this month because there’s hardly any moonlight in the skies.

Get out into the countryside if you’re not already there and really get a good look at the universe above you.

Do some galaxy gazing. I guarantee that this will be a treat that you’ll remember for a long time.

So there you are, gazing into the early autumn Butler heavens. How many stars can you see with your naked eye? Conventional astronomy textbooks say that you can see about 3,000 stars with the naked eye, but I’m sure there’s a lot more than that.

Warning! Do not try to count them. You’ll fall asleep for sure and your show will be over.

As your eyes roam the night sky, you can’t help but notice the bright band of milky light that bisects the sky from north-northeast to south-southwest like a bold artist’s stroke.

You may have been taught at an early age that the band is the Milky Way galaxy.

While that’s certainly true, what you have to realize is that every single star you see at anytime, including the sun, are all members of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. That artist’s band across the sky is just the thickest part.

If you could jump into a magical spaceship and fling yourself out and away from the Milky Way, what you would see in your rearview mirror is a group of at least 200 to 300 billion stars in the shape of a flying saucer, broken up into spiral arms with a large hump in the middle.

The Milky Way is a little more than 100,000 light-years in diameter and 10,000 light-years thick, although the center bulge is about 30,000 light years.

By the way, one light-year alone is equal to about six trillion miles. Our sun is about 30,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy in one of the arms.

When you see that milky band of light across the sky, you are looking edgewise into our galaxy. All of the stars we see obediently orbit around the center of the Milky Way. Our sun takes more than 200 million years to make one circuit.

In case you’re wondering, the center of the Milky Way lays in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius the Archer, more commonly known by its nickname, the teapot, because that’s what it really looks like.

Sagittarius lies in the very low southwestern sky in the early evening.

The Milky Way band is not really all that much brighter around the teapot, because there is a lot of dark interstellar gas and dust that blocks the “hump” at our galaxy’s center.

It’s been said that if we could see the Milky Way’s central region unobstructed, that area of the sky would be much brighter than a full moon!

Lie back on the ground and just roll your eyes all across the sky and especially around the Milky Way band. With just a pair of binoculars you’ll see all kinds of celestial treasures like bright nebulae clouds, star clusters, and dark rifts.

You might even see a few human made satellites rolling across the heavens.

Kick back and enjoy the greatest show off the Earth. It’s also a great time to get to know the summer constellations.

Oh, one more thing to keep in mind while you’re galaxy gazing. Our Milky Way galaxy is only one of millions of other galaxies out there. The Hubble telescope has seen galaxies more than 12 billion light years away.

It’s a big sky out there for you to enjoy. Don’t miss it.

Celestial hugging

Just after evening twilight, look in the very low south-southwest sky near the horizon for a close conjunction between the red planet Mars and the red star Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion.

You’ll see what looks like twin red “stars.” Neither one of them are good telescope targets right now, but as you look at them, keep in mind that while they look alike that’s hardly the case.

Mars is only about 4,000 miles in diameter and 130 million miles away while Antares is a huge star more than 700 million miles in diameter and about 550 light years away!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul and is author of the book, “Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at www.adventurepublications.net.