The summer of 2023 begins this coming Wednesday morning at 9:58, at least astronomically. Astronomers call this the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

On Wednesday, the sun reaches its highest height in our Butler sky. It all has to do with the inclination or tilt of Earth's axis as it orbits the sun.

On the summer solstice day, the northern hemisphere is tilted to the maximum toward the sun's most direct rays. At noon, the sun shines directly overhead along the Tropic of Cancer at a latitude of 23.5 degrees north of the equator.

Here in Butler, around 41 degrees north latitude, our noontime sun won't be quite at the zenith, but it will be close at nearly 65 degrees above the southern horizon.

On Wednesday, the sun will take a very long and very high arc across the sky. It will rise in the northeast at 5:48 a.m. and set in the northwest at 8:54 p.m., giving us nearly 15 hours and 6 minutes of daylight. As a bonus, morning and evening twilight last a lot longer than in winter.

Of course, the longest days of the year make for the shortest nights, and with the late sunsets and extended twilight, stargazing becomes a late-night adventure. You have to become a night owl!

Summer stargazing can also be more challenging because additional moisture in the air can muddy up even clear skies a bit more this time of year. The warmer weather makes up for the late hours and the humidity, even if you live in areas prone to mosquitoes. There's bug juice for that, and in most places, mosquitoes ease off biting an hour or two after sunset.

An enjoyable thing to do this time of year is to spend an entire night under the stars. It's undoubtedly doable now with the shortest nights of the year, and I've done it many times and found it really good for the soul.

If you have a telescope or binoculars, it's a lot of fun to search for targets like planets, the moon, star clusters, nebulas and more. But I also like to just sit in silence, lying back in a lawn chair, with or without a star map or smartphone app like Sky Guide, rolling my eyes all around the celestial dome.

If you have time and are not too tired, stay awake long enough to take in the morning twilight. Sit back, face the northeast about an hour before sunrise, and take in all the sights and sounds. Turn off your phone and get rid of any other distractions. You'll see, hear, and even smell the wonder of another day breaking, and you don't have to be off in some exotic location either. Your own neighborhood is just fine, be it urban or rural.

This week is also great to pull an all-nighter because there will be very little moonlight in the skies, making for a much darker canopy for power stargazing.

As the week goes on, the crescent moon will start showing up in the evening sky, but it will set no later than midnight.

The first full moon of summer will be on July 3. You can't help but notice that the full moon takes a short and low track from east to west across the southern sky this time of year. The full moon's path in the sky is the same one the sun takes around the winter solstice, the first day of winter.

It makes sense because any full moon is always on the opposite end of the sky from the sun, so this time of year, while the sun takes its high arc, the full moon is a low rider. Around the winter solstice in late December, there's a flip-flop. The sun takes a low trajectory in the sky, and the full moon is a high rider around Christmas.

Enjoy the start of astronomical summer this week!

Celestial happening this week: As an added attraction to the beginning of astronomical summer, the new crescent moon will have close celestial "huggings" with the planets Venus and Mars in the early evening low western sky.

On Wednesday, the moon will be perched just to the right of very bright Venus. On Thursday, the crescent moon will be a little fatter and will shine just above the much fainter but distinctly reddish-tinged Mars.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of "Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations," published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.