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What's in the sky tonight?
June 18, 2012

-Vega is the brightest star on the eastern side of the evening sky. Deneb is the brightest to its lower left. Altair is farther to Vega's lower right. These form the big Summer Triangle.

-This season there's another, temporary "Summer Triangle" toward the southwest: bright Arcturus high on top, the Saturn-Spica pair below it, and Mars off to the pair's right or lower right.

-Venus (magnitude –4.3), after transiting the Sun on June 5th, is now deep in the glow of dawn. Look for it low in the east-northeast before sunrise. Don't confuse Venus with Jupiter to its upper right. The two planets are 9° apart on the morning of June 16th and 6° apart on June 23rd.

-Below or lower right of Venus twinkles much fainter Aldebaran; use binoculars as daybreak brightens. Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets, are on their way up for a grand showing in the morning sky this summer.

Astro Picture of the Day:
June 18, 2012

Source:
Why were the statues on Easter Island built? No one is sure. What is sure is that over 800 large stone statues exist there. The Easter Island statues, stand, on the average, over twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass. Few specifics are known about the history or meaning of the unusual statues, but many believe that they were created about 500 years ago in the images of local leaders of a lost civilization. Pictured above, some of the stone giants were illuminated in 2009 under the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy.