Photo of the Week. Another daylight first quarter
Moon with tree.
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Astronomy news for the two weeks starting Friday, June 5,
2015.
The next skylights will appear June 19, 2015.
The fortnight begins with the Moon in its waning gibbous phase as it approaches third quarter, which takes place the morning
of Tuesday, June 9, with the Moon in the daylight sky heading
toward moonset. It then runs through the waning crescent and finally reaches new
Moon on Tuesday the 16th. By the evening of Wednesday the 17th,
we'll get to see the growing crescent in
western evening twilight. There are no planetary passages unless
you want to count the Moon going north of
Neptune on Monday the 8th and barely south of Uranus on Thursday the 11th. A conjunction between the
waning crescent and
Mercury on Sunday the 14th is quite out of sight. Our
companion passes perigee, where
it is closest to Earth, on Tuesday the 9th.
While there are no partnerships between the Moon and bright
planets, the latter hardly disappoint. Brilliant in the west
after sundown, Venus does not set
until 11:30 or so PM Daylight Time, while bright Jupiter (in western Leo)
steadily approaches it. The show is impossible to miss as the duo
heads toward their close rendezvous as June turns to July. While
the display has no physical meaning, it's lovely to see and helps
draw people out under the starry sky. By the time of their close
encounter, the pair will be setting around the end of evening
twilight. In other planetary news, Mars finally goes
through conjunction with the Sun on Sunday the 14th, the god of
war then invading the morning sky. It will be mid-August,
however, before Mars surfaces prior to dawn, by which time Venus
will be gone from the evening sky. Among bright planets, that
leaves us with glorious Saturn, which transits the
meridian to the south not long after
the end of evening twilight, the ringed one still to the northwest
of Antares in Scorpius. Much fainter, Neptune, in
Aquarius, begins retrograde motion,
westerly against the background stars, on Friday the 12th.
Few constellations are as glorious
as Scorpius, the celestial
scorpion, which carries the red supergiant Antares as its heart.
Now crossing to the south in late evening and looking like what it
is supposed to be, the curving figure is set into an extraordinary
part of the Milky Way to the west of
Sagittarius. To the southwest of
Scorpius lies Lupus, the Wolf,
made of a sprawl of stars that together look nothing like its
namesake.
