UK Night Sky This Week

🌠 This Week's Highlight: The Unpredictable June Bootids Peak on 27 June

The headline event this week is one of the most intriguing — and least predictable — showers of the year: the June Bootids. Active from around 22 June to 2 July, the shower reaches its peak on the night of Saturday 27 June into the early hours of the 28th. In most years it manages only a handful of meteors an hour — but the June Bootids have a history of sudden surprise outbursts, occasionally throwing out dozens of meteors in a short burst (most famously in 1998 and 2004). Nobody can reliably forecast when the next one will come, which is exactly what makes them worth a look.

The meteors radiate from the constellation Boötes, which sits high in the western sky during the evening from the UK — so you don't need to wait until the small hours. They're also among the slowest meteors of any shower, drifting across the sky at just ~18 km/s, which makes the brighter ones lovely and leisurely to watch. No equipment needed: just lie back, let your eyes adapt for 20 minutes, and take in as much sky as you can.

Be realistic, though: this year a bright waxing gibbous Moon (around 97% lit, just two days short of full) floods the sky on peak night and will drown out all but the brightest meteors. As a consolation, that same Moon makes a striking pairing with the red supergiant Antares in Scorpius that evening — the two sit less than half a degree apart, low in the south. Combined with the short, twilit nights around the solstice, conditions are far from ideal for the shower. Treat the June Bootids as a fun gamble rather than a guaranteed show — and if the sky stays quiet, the Moon-Antares pairing and low, brilliant Venus in the west make fine consolation prizes.

🌟 Planets Visible from the UK This Week

🌛 The Moon This Week

This week the Moon shifts from helpful to dominant. First Quarter fell on Sunday 21 June (22:55 BST), so we begin the week with a half-lit Moon high in the evening sky and end it with a fat waxing gibbous brightening every night toward the Full Strawberry Moon on 29 June. Great for lunar observing — bad for anything faint.

On Monday and Tuesday the Moon (around 58–68% lit) sits low in the south to south-west in the evening, passing close to Spica in Virgo, and sets after 01:00 BST. By midweek it's a clear gibbous, up for most of the dark hours, and by Saturday 27 June — June Bootids peak night — it's roughly 97% lit, parked right beside red Antares low in the south, and stays above the horizon almost all night, badly washing out the meteors. The best time to enjoy the Moon itself is along the terminator, where low sunlight throws crater walls and mountain ranges into sharp relief; binoculars or any small telescope will show stunning detail early in the week.

Remember we've just passed the summer solstice (21 June), so from the UK there's no true astronomical darkness at all this week — the sky never gets fully black, and from Scotland it stays in bright twilight all night. Add the gibbous Moon and this is a week for the Moon, bright planets, and the brighter stars rather than faint deep-sky hunting.

🌌 Deep Sky Targets for UK Observers This Week

Let's be honest: with a bright waxing gibbous Moon and no true darkness around the solstice, this is not a week for faint galaxies and nebulae. The smart move is to target objects that shine through moonlight and twilight — bright double stars, the more brilliant globular clusters, and the showpiece stars of the summer sky. Here are the best bets that hold up under a bright Moon:

• The Moon itself — your best telescopic target this week. Run along the terminator (the line dividing light from dark) early in the week and you'll see craters, mountain ranges and ridges thrown into dramatic relief by low sunlight. The view changes night to night as the Moon fills out — even cheap binoculars reveal real detail.
• Albireo (Beta Cygni) — one of the finest coloured double stars in the sky and bright enough to enjoy under moonlight. A small telescope at modest magnification splits it into a golden star paired with a vivid blue-white companion. Cygnus is well up in the east by 23:30 BST.
• Mizar & Alcor in the Plough — the famous "horse and rider" double in the handle of the Big Dipper, high overhead all evening. Easy in binoculars, and a small telescope splits Mizar itself into two. A perfect moonlit-night target that needs no dark sky.
• M13 — Great Hercules Globular Cluster — June is M13's best month and, as the sky's brightest northern globular, it can still be picked up in binoculars even with the Moon about. It transits high in the south around 23:00 BST. A small telescope begins to resolve its outer stars — push the magnification to cut the moonlit sky glow.
• The Summer Triangle & Arcturus — the bright stars sail through the moonlight unbothered. Vega blazes almost overhead, with Deneb and Altair completing the Triangle in the east. Over in the west, brilliant orange Arcturus sits in Boötes — handily, the same constellation the June Bootids radiate from, so it doubles as your signpost on peak night.

🔔 Get Alerts for Clear Nights

📅 Night-by-Night Planner: 22–28 June 2026

Sunset ~21:21 BST · No true astronomical darkness (post-solstice) · All times BST · UK skies · Moon brightens through the week

📖 Go Deeper

🔭 What to use this week

The June Bootids meteor shower needs no equipment at all — just your eyes, a reclining chair and a little patience. The real stars of the week for optics are the bright gibbous Moon (snug beside Antares on the 27th) and brilliant Venus as it slides past the Beehive Cluster — both lovely in binoculars. For Saturn's rings before dawn, a small telescope is ideal.

FLO links use our referral code — same price for you, small commission for us.