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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Yes, for our final segment today, let's turn our eyes to the sky, because July, apparently, is a peak time to do some stargazing. New Yorkers can enjoy the return of what's called Manhattanhenge, even though you kind of look straight ahead for that, and a trio of meteor showers will light up the sky after midnight. Joining us now is Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, who will talk about what you need to know and how to watch it all. Jackie, welcome back to WNYC. Great to have you again.

Jackie Faherty: Hi, Brian. I'm happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, maybe we can squeeze in a few calls here. If you are a city stargazer or from anywhere in our metro area, even where it actually gets dark at night, a meteor shower chaser, do you have a favorite summer sky memory? Have you found a place to watch the night sky from city or outside? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Call or text. Jackie, Manhattanhenge or Stonehenge. Does this count as stargazing?

Jackie Faherty: Yes, totally, because it's a star. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: The sun.

Jackie Faherty: The sun. Yes. So I think that it's the OG stargazing, if you will, because it is our sun. The thing is that people forget we used to use monitoring the position of the sun as our timekeeping method. This isn't just like an Instagram holiday for your best sunset picture, it's also a reminder of how we used to use astronomy as our timekeeping method. So I now, every time Manhattanhenge season comes around, I feel like I know where the Earth is in its orbit around the sun. It's the perfect time, because we're lined up with the position of the sun right at sunset. So, I encourage everybody to still go out and watch that, and we're doing this big public program at the museum tomorrow, if you want to celebrate with us. We've got a street closure, there's going to be a salsa band, so you can dance and watch the sun set. So stargazing and dancing together, Brian, is an excellent combo.

Brian Lehrer: That sounds like so much fun. Tomorrow night, Friday night, is a Manhattanhenge night, and people can look west toward the Hudson River as the sun is going down?

Jackie Faherty: Yes. Just as a reminder for people, Manhattanhenge is the name that we give to the days of the year when the sun sets perfectly aligned with the grid of Manhattan. So it's not-- we all know the whole city isn't gridded. Go down to the West Village, the Lower East Side, and you're going to be off grid, so you have to stay on grid. If you're on the grid, and you stand in the middle of one of the cross streets looking towards beautiful New Jersey, right at sunset, so right around eight o'clock is when it's good, and you point your fingers straight down the street, you could extend your arm 93 million miles all the way to the sun and you would intersect the sun's position.

That's why it lights up the Canyon in this gorgeous way, because sunset is the best light of the day. Sunset and sunrise. We will celebrate it, and I'll explain the science of it first inside of our LeFrak Theater. We actually have a 3D immersive experience that I'll take you through, and I'll give the full science behind Manhattanhenge. You can watch it with us tomorrow, and then the last, last day for Manhattanhenge is July 12th. Then Saturday is your last chance. After that, you got to wait till next year to catch the sun between your buildings.

Brian Lehrer: Then once the sun goes down, you said July is really a showcase month for two big sites. The Summer Triangle, and you'll explain what that is, and the Milky Way. So, for listeners who might not know, what is the Summer Triangle?

Jackie Faherty: Yes, the Summer Triangle is a name we've given to three different stars which are actually in three different constellations, but they are three very close by stars. It's Vega, the star Vega, gorgeous name, blue sapphire looking star in the sky. Then two other stars, Altair and Deneb. All three of these stars end up making out the full Summer Triangle. The three stars themselves are some of the brightest stars in the sky. Because of that, even New Yorkers-

[laughter]

Jackie Faherty: -even New Yorkers. Now, not New Yorkers in Times Square. Do not try and challenge me and say, "You can't see it all over New York City," because that is correct. Don't try and do it from the Jumbotron. Get yourself towards the water, or get yourself to a rooftop. Inwood is a great place to look. I always tell people to go uptown, but any of the outer boroughs, just get yourself so that you don't have a lot of light in your eye and look straight up, because the Summer Triangle, these three stars, all of which are very close to you, they are the Vega and Deneb are two of the closest stars to us. So you can see them from New York City, and they make out a triangle.

Now, the one thing about being in New York City, where we have light pollution, where you don't see as many stars, means that the bright ones and the patterns they make really stick out. So you will see this triangle. They will show up as three stars, and you will look straight up. There's a beautiful legend of Vega and Altair, because they're on either side of the Milky Way Galaxy, which we're inside of, and so the Milky Way right now, Brian, is stretching across your sky. In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer is the best time to see the Milky Way.

For that, I really do suggest going to the darkest possible sky you could get to. It's very hard to see the Milky Way from Manhattan. If you do, you could use Vega and Altair as two markers to find it, because the legend is that they were lovers and they got separated by this river for a variety of reasons, but they mark either side of the Milky Way disc that you can make out. It's a beautiful sight, so definitely look for these as markers for you.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us more about how to look at or for the Milky Way, because the Summer Triangle, that was very clear, it's three points in the sky, but we're part of the Milky Way. Right?

Jackie Faherty: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: What are we actually looking for when we look at the Milky Way in the sky?

Jackie Faherty: Yes. This is going to be a shameless plug, but if you want to come see the Milky Way and all its glory, and you're a New Yorker, you should come to the museum and see our new space show, which is called, Encounters in the Milky Way, because the show begins with an epic, gorgeous nighttime sky from the clearest point that you could possibly get to on planet Earth, view of the Milky Way. It's something I can't show you as a New Yorker, because we have too much light pollution. Not just that, we have a lot of water vapor in the air. So, really, you have to go to a mountaintop, like I go to mountaintops in Chile a lot and look at it.

When you see it, it's different. It really sticks out to you, because, yes, we are inside of it, but the Milky Way is a disc and it's like we're inside of a, like a tire, and we're looking out towards the tire where the majority of stars are. So, as you kind of look towards the sky, and this is what people have done since the history of looking up at the sky, you'd see this area of your sky that looks kind of-- it looks kind of milky, which is why it gets this Milky Way term. It's got this, like, white kind of tint to it, because there's so many stars in there, they end up creating a little bit of a wispy glow to it.

We're inside of it, but our location within the galaxy is such that we look through all of those stars when we're looking out. It's actually really hard for astronomers to see through the plane of the Milky Way. So we actually lovingly call it the Zone of Avoidance, for observational astronomers. We have a lot of trouble looking through the Milky Way, but for a general observer, it's awesome, because you can walk outside, you can look, and you're looking at stars that belong to the same galaxy that you're inside of.

Brian Lehrer: I think people's therapists talk about the zone of avoidance, too, but I guess that's a different context.

Jackie Faherty: Different context.

Brian Lehrer: One more. After midnight, meteor showers. Real quick, what are the meteor showers that we can look for and when?

Jackie Faherty: Yes. We're in a ramp up zone in July. There's two meteor showers that are going on towards the end of July, with peaks really at July, like very end of the month. They're called the Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids. They're always named after constellations that they look like they radiate from. It's all in preparation, Brian, for the big, big, big one, which happens and peaks in August, but it's ramping up in July. It's called the Perseids. The constellation Perseus is what it's named after. It is by far the blockbuster meteor shower of all meteor showers.

It's so good. It's so good for the Northern Hemisphere. You need to sit yourself outside. You should prepare in July. Just start looking at the sky, see what you can see. You're probably going to see a lot of satellites in the sky, but when you see a fireball, you are not going to mistake it. It will shake you to its core. The Perseids is your best shot at getting a really good one. Start in July towards the end of the month, but just get ready because it peaks in August. It peaks August 12 to 13.

Brian Lehrer: So neat. We've got 30 seconds left. You mentioned going to a mountaintop in Chile, which a lot of people can't just kind of go out and do tomorrow night. We have a text from a listener who says, "Great Basin National Park is a little-known gem in our park system for looking at the sky." I think that's in Nevada. If you could give people in New York one tip as to where to go, in the metro area, where they could really see the sky and not travel too far, even if they're on Times Square. 15 seconds. Got one?

Jackie Faherty: I grew up in Orange County, New York, right up the Hudson Valley here, and I was there this past weekend. Gorgeous sky. You don't have to go that far. Get yourself out of the light pollution of the city. You can find it along the Hudson Valley, tons of little towns. Little hamlets, you'll see the sky. You will see the Milky Way there.

Brian Lehrer: Jackie Faherty, associate curator in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, always great when you come on with us. Thanks for today.

Jackie Faherty: Thanks, Brian. Love coming on.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Our interns this summer are Vito Emanuel and Adelina Romero. Stay tuned for Alison.

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