{"id":538945,"date":"2026-07-08T09:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/538945\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T09:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:18:12","slug":"the-sky-today-on-wednesday-july-8-asteroid-melpomene-at-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/538945\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sky Today on\u00a0Wednesday, July 8: Asteroid Melpomene at opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tMain-belt world Melpomene reaches opposition in the constellation Aquila. Visible all night, this space rock is ready for its closeup.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1211\" height=\"828\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Melpomene-07082026.png\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"Sky chart showing the southeast sky on July 8, 2026, at 10:30 p.m. Asteroid Melpomene is marked with a red dashed crosshair near the center of the frame. The bright star Altair is visible in the upper left. A faint band of the Milky Way stretches across the upper right portion of the sky.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAsteroid Melpomene reaches opposition in Aquila. The asteroid\u2019s location on July 8, the night of opposition, is marked by the red crosshairs, to the lower right of the star Lambda (\u03bb) Aquilae in the Eagle\u2019s tail. Credit: Stellarium\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/observing\/the-sky-this-week-from-july-3-to-10-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sky This Week<\/a>\u00a0column.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">July 7: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/observing\/the-sky-today-tuesday-july-7-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Moon, Saturn, and Neptune<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">Asteroid 18 Melpomene reaches opposition at 4 P.M. EDT. Now visible all night long, the 9th-magnitude main-belt world is located in southeastern Aquila, near the Eagle\u2019s border with Scutum.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To track the asteroid for yourself, swing binoculars or any telescope up above the southeastern horizon around 10:30 P.M. local daylight time. We\u2019re looking in the region between the Sagittarius Teapot and the bright star Altair in Aquila. Between these two markers in the sky lies magnitude 3.4 Lambda (\u03bb) Aquilae, located in the tail of Aquila. Find this star, then slide about 4.7\u00b0 due south to land on Melpomene.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The asteroid lies close to a field star of similar magnitude, forming an artificial \u201cdouble star.\u201d Over the course of the night, Melpomene will move westward, pulling away from the star. You may be able to note its motion if you snap a picture and then come back a few hours later to take another.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sunrise:\u00a05:39 A.M.<br \/>Sunset:\u00a08:31 P.M.<br \/>Moonrise:\u00a012:27 A.M.<br \/>Moonset:\u00a02:28 P.M.<br \/>Moon Phase:\u00a0Waning crescent (36%)<br \/>*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alison Klesman\u00a0is senior editor of\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has studied a variety of topics, from minor planets to supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Main-belt world Melpomene reaches opposition in the constellation Aquila. Visible all night, this space&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,7882,82,44123],"class_list":["post-538945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}