Phil Daoust

For most of us, summer is all about daytime, from the morning sky to the long, late dusk. It’s the sunshine that we dream of when we’re sitting at our desks, that we pay for when we book our holidays. And if we’ve got kids, they wear us out by sunset, so all we want is to get them off to bed, then turn in ourselves. What a waste! There is little lovelier than a clear summer night, with Altair, Deneb and Vega pricking the darkness, the Milky Way spilling across the heavens and the international space station flashing overhead. It’s all happening up there, and you don’t need a telescope to enjoy it. Even kids can’t spoil the magic. It can be hard to get your bearings, though. The stars, planets and Moon all rise roughly in the east and set roughly in the west – just like the sun – but they do so in their own sweet time, with the moon up 50 minutes later every night, each planet following a separate timetable, and many stars only visible in summer or winter. One of the most striking constellations, Orion, won’t be seen from Croatia for months yet. So how do you find your way around? There are excellent online guides, like the Society for Popular Astronomy’s kid-friendly The Sky This Month page. But the simplest way is to download a good astronomy app such as Sky View or Star Walk 2, both of which are available for Android or iOS. As well as telling you what’s visible when – for example, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can all be seen with the naked eye – they will let y