Bakersfield Night Sky — June 20, 2026
The official start of the season of summer is tomorrow with the June solstice. At the June solstice, the sun reaches its northernmost position with respect to the stars and begins a three-month drift back southward to the celestial equator position for the autumnal equinox. Since the June solstice depends on the position of the sun against the star background, we can give the precise time for the solstice for 2026: it will be at 1:24 a.m. Sunday morning. With the solstice being so close to midnight, the daylight length for June 20 and June 21 are going to be near identical: 14 hours, 32 minutes, 50 seconds long.
Although the longest daylight is on June 20 and 21, those dates do not have the earliest sunrises or latest sunsets of the year. The earliest sunrise for Bakersfield was on June 12 and 13 and the latest sunset for Bakersfield will be on June 28 and 29. The non-uniform drift of the sun eastward among the stars means the times are not going to be perfectly symmetrical as they would be in a virtual or AI-generated world. If you want more details about the non-uniform drift of the sun among the stars and how we measure time, see the “Equation of Time” page on my AstronomyNotes.com website.
The June solstice is also when the sun’s energy is hitting our location most directly, so it is the most concentrated. However, this is usually not the hottest day of year for us because it takes time for things to heat up, just as the hottest time of day is usually in the afternoon when the sun is a bit farther down in the sky. Our hottest days will be coming in July and August. Earth will be at its farthest distance from the sun in early July, so our warm temperatures must be due to sun angle and exposure time instead of distance.
Tonight shortly after sunset, look west-northwest to see Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus in that order of increasing altitude in the sky. The separation between Mercury and Jupiter is about half of the separation between Jupiter and Venus. They’ll make a nice line in the sky. On June 25, Mercury and Jupiter will be at their closest distance from one another, about a couple knuckles at arm’s length apart, with Mercury to the lower right of Jupiter.
Tonight, the moon is a fat crescent in between Leo and Virgo. Shortly after sunset, the moon will be about halfway up in the southwest sky. On solstice day, the moon will be at first quarter phase, appearing half lit up with the lit half on the right. On June 23, the waxing gibbous moon will be about half a fist-width at arm’s length to the lower left of Virgo’s brightest star, Spica. On June 26, a waxing gibbous moon will be to the upper right of the alpha star of Scorpius, the red supergiant Antares.
In astronomy news, one item crossing my computer desktop is about the Amazon Leo communication/internet satellites that are brighter than they should be and they will, therefore, have a greater negative effect on astronomy. There are currently over 300 Amazon Leo satellites in orbit with plans to have over ten times that amount making up their constellation. With Starlink’s over 10,000 satellites, it is getting nearly impossible to observe for an extended time without a bright satellite streaking through the frame.
As temperatures rise, please check out
https://www.kerncounty.com/government/aging-adult-services/services/cooling-centers for where are the cooling centers in Kern County.
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Director of the William M Thomas Planetarium at Bakersfield College
Author of the award-winning website www.astronomynotes.com
