SKYLIGHTS
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, June 4, 1999.
Skylights now continues weekly; thanks for your patience. The Moon
wanes through its gibbous phase the early part of the week, passing
through third quarter the night of Sunday, June 6, around the time
of moonrise. We begin the week on Friday, June 4, with the Moon
passing over, or occulting, Uranus, the event not visible here.
But the morning of Thursday, June 10, the waning crescent will
easily be found in twilight to the southeast of Jupiter, which is
now making a nice appearance in the early dawn sky. The contrast
of the bright planet with the thin lunar crescent framing its
earthlit night-time side will make a fine good morning for early
risers.
White Venus, impossible to miss, grows yet brighter and higher in
the evening sky, while bright reddish Mars, now prominent in the
southeastern evening sky, has been moving slowly toward it. Mars
is now very close to, and just to the northeast of, the first
magnitude star Spica in Virgo, the two rather mimicking Castor and
Pollux in Gemini, which are now far to the west in twilight. On
Saturday, the 5th, Mars ceases its retrograde (westerly) motion
against the background stars and begins once again its normal
easterly movement, which will move it away from Spica and also
prevent it from becoming much closer to Venus. As it picks up
speed its motion relative to Spica will become very obvious.
The Big Dipper is now high in the evening sky, almost overhead and
for most of us a bit to the north. Ride a line due south of the
Dipper's handle. Along it you will encounter: the modern
constellation Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs (mostly made of a
pair of stars parallel to the Dipper's handle); a modern
constellation with ancient roots, Coma Berenices, Berenices Hair,
a wonderful lacy spray of faint stars that is a physical cluster;
Virgo, the Virgin, with its luminary Spica, just to the east of the
lopsided box that makes Corvus the Crow; directly below Spica the
tail of Hydra the Water Serpent, the longest constellation in the
sky; farther down (just above the horizon for most northerners) a
few modestly bright stars that make northern Centaurus, the Centaur
(from more southern regions, the great globular cluster Omega
Centauri appears as a fuzzy blob); and finally below the horizon
for most of the US is the closest star, Alpha Centauri, which
follows Crux, the famed Southern Cross across the sky, the set
visible in the US only from Hawaii and deep southern Florida and
Texas.
