Stargazing: Sechelt, British Columbia

Clear Sky ForecastUpdated: Friday, July 3, 2009, 14:00 PDT

Friday Evening

21

°C

Sunny

P.O.P.: 10%, Wind: SW 5km/h

Friday Overnight

15

°C

Clear

P.O.P.: 0%, Wind: N 5km/h

Jul. 7

Full Moon

Jul. 15

Last Quarter

Jul. 21

New Moon

Jul. 28

First Quarter

Click here to calculate the sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset times and the seasonal calendar.

The Little Donut in the Sky

For backyard astronomers the constellation Lyra-the harp offers up special deep sky riches. Besides having the fifth-brightest star in the entire sky and beautiful binary suns, there lies another treasure - the famous Ring Nebula.

Visible only through telescopes, this pale donut-shaped ring is actually a shell of gas thrown off by a dying star more than 2000 light years away. Photographs show the one light year diameter expanding bubble of gas in a beautiful rainbow of colours.

Larger telescopes also reveal a faint star in the centre of this ghostly ring. Known as a white dwarf, it is the naked white-hot core of a star that exploded 20,000 years ago. Astronomers believe that just such a fate awaits our own Sun when it dies. But no need to worry, our Sun has another 5 billion years to go.

- Andrew Fazekas