Photo of the Week. Ready for another transit of Venus
picture? This one was taken with a hand-held camera and filter.
Note the vague sunspots down toward center and the distinct
darkening at the edge, which tells that the Sun is a sphere and
that the solar "surface" is a partially-transparent gas.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, June 22, 2012.
Starting in its thin waxing crescent
phase visible in the western evening sky, our Moon passes through
its first quarter the night of Tuesday,
June 26, roughly as it approaches its setting time. It thereafter
waxes a bit in the gibbous phase, full Moon not achieved until well into next
week. The night of Saturday the 23rd, the crescent will appear
below Regulus in Leo. The nights of Monday the 25th
through Wednesday the 27th, we see the Moon play with Mars and
Saturn, first appearing
below the red planet, then the next night (that of the first
quarter) to the left of Mars and below Porrima (Gamma Virginis), finally on
the last night of our trio winding up making a fine triangle with
Spica (up and to the left) and
Saturn (above).
The leading news involves distant Saturn and nearby Venus, both of
which cease their westerly
retrograde motions against the stellar background and begin
moving easterly again (Saturn the morning of Tuesday the 26th,
Venus much later on the same day). That means that Saturn is done
encroaching on Spica in Virgo
(the planet now a few degrees to the north of the star and still
notably the brighter), and will now slowly begin moving away from
it as it heads in the direction of Libra. Well into the west as the sky darkens, the
ringed planet now sets around midnight.
On the other side of the sky, Venus is beginning to make a strong
appearance, brightly rising about as dawn begins to break. As long
as we are here, look for
Jupiter shining above it, the giant planet rising about half an
hour before Venus. The morning of Friday the 29th will provide a
nice easterly lineup (from bottom to top) of Aldebaran in Taurus, Venus, Jupiter, and
Taurus's Pleiades. You will
need a clear horizon; binoculars will help. Back into evening's
west, we look for Mars. Setting just before local midnight (1 AM
Daylight), the planet is moving easterly through western Virgo
(well to the southeast of Regulus) as it heads towards Saturn and
Spica. Also in western evening twilight, we might spot
Mercury, seen down and to the right of the crescent Moon the
night of Friday the 22nd.
It's the season for Arcturus,
the brightest star of the northern hemisphere, which shines high on
the meridian around 9 PM to the
southeast of the Big Dipper. To
the northeast find the semi-circle of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, which lies between
Arcturus's Bootes (which stretches
like a kite to the north-northeast) and the pair of boxes that
makes central Hercules
