Today marks when Mars will be nearest to Earth in 2016. Try viewing Mars in a large telescope to see if you can spot its polar ice caps or any of the darker regions on the rusty-red surface…
see http://cantonbecker.com/retrograde for details…
Saturn rules the summer sky, but on this night, the ringed planet truly takes center stage. When it reaches opposition, Saturn will be bright and fully illuminated by the Sun. You may even notice that its rings look brighter than usual thanks to a phenomenon known as the Seeliger Effect. Take it all in! Saturn’s rings will be visible in even small aperture telescopes.
Venus begins to change from the morning star to the evening star, lasting until March 2017.
In the northern hemisphere, the longest day of the year when the Sun is farthest north. In the southern hemisphere, this would be your winter solstice, marking the shortest day of the year. The summer solstice marks the first day of the season of summer. The declination of the Sun on the (northern) summer solstice is known as the tropic of cancer (23° 27′).
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/SummerSolstice.html