Photo of the Week. In evening twilight of June 13,
2006, four days before conjunction, Mars (the fainter of the two
bright objects) moves up on Saturn (the brighter). Cancer's Beehive Cluster can just be seen between the two.
Delta Cancri is down and to the left of Saturn, while Gamma lies
above Mars.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, July 7, 2006.
The week of the full Moon -- the "thunder Moon," or "hay Moon" --
is now upon us, the phase reached the night of Monday, July 10,
shortly after Moonrise in North America. At the start of the week,
the Moon will be in its waxing gibbous phase, while after full it
gibbously (not a real word) wanes. The full Moon closest to the
beginning of summer is always the lowest, most southerly, of the
year, as was that of last June 11. This one though comes close, as
it bottoms out in eastern Sagittarius just to the east of the winter solstice. Seen through a
thick, sometimes humid and hazy atmosphere, low summer full Moons
take on a soft light and a charm of their own.
The night of Friday the 7th (really the morning of the 8th, just
after midnight), the waxing gibbous makes a close pass just to the
south of bright Antares of Scorpius, the event made rather
difficult to see by the lunar brightness. The Moon will actually
occult the star as seen from
New Zealand and parts of
Australia, the 7th such covering so far this year, the orbit of
the Moon now being such as to hit the star each month. Then on
Wednesday the 12th, the Moon will pass south of nearly invisible Neptune,
which lies in far eastern Capricornus near the border with Aquarius.
Mars
, moving rapidly eastward against the stellar background,
continues to separate from
Saturn, the ringed planet now setting in late twilight, the red
planet just as twilight comes to a close, making the two difficult
to see. The night really belongs to Jupiter. Standing to the east of Spica, the giant planet dominates the
southern and southwestern skies until it finally sets around 1:30
AM Daylight Time. After a short hiatus with no bright planets, Venus
then lofts itself above the horizon just after 3:30 AM, the
classic "morning star" still tracking the beginning of
dawn.
Few constellations capture the
imagination like the Zodiac's
Scorpius, which looks for all the
world like a deadly scorpion that for northerners tracks along the
southern horizon. When the Moon is out of the way, look for bright
Antares, then to the northwest
for the three-star head, and then to the southeast for the graceful
curve of the body that ends in a two-star "stinger." To the west
and south is Lupus, the Wolf, to
the east, Sagittarius and the
immense and striking Milky Way.
