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Lunar Eclipse Month!!! Get ready for a May that boasts a wonderful blood moon and an array of morning planets all month long.
Welcome to Observing With Webb, where a high school astronomy teacher tells you what you’re looking at, why it’s so cool, and what you should check out later this month…at night.
Naked-eye PLANETS
Sunset – Mercury (first week of May)
Throughout the night – None
Morning – Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn (SE)
Let’s use Venus as our guidepost for the month, as it is the most visible object in the morning sky.
EVENTS
Evening Crescents (look West after Sunset)
First Quarter Moon – 8th (Visible until midnight)
Evening Gibbous (Mostly lit, after Sunset)
Full Moon – 17th (Visible all night)
Waning Gibbous (Mostly lit, rises later at night)
Last Quarter Moon – 22nd (Visible from midnight into the morning)
Morning Crescents (look East in the AM)
New Moon – 30th (darkest skies)
1st – CONJUNCTION – Jupiter, Venus – Less than 1˚ apart, Jupiter and Venus rise together this morning. Get out and look low in the East after 4:30am (when they rise) for the brightest object, Venus, with Jupiter barely up and to the right.
2nd – Close Encounter – Mercury, Pleiades, Moon – Get out just after sunset, with a nice view of the NWN horizon. The first light in the sky will be Mercury, in its crescent phase, with the Pleiades about 2˚ down and to the right. Get your binoculars and scopes out! The Moon can also be your guide, being 4˚ up and to the left of Mercury.
15th – 16th – TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE – Sunday night into Monday morning
Watch the Moon pass through the Earth’s shadow and witness the light from all the sunrises and sunsets on Earth at the same time! No telescope needed for this event! (Though it will certainly make the event even cooler) Make sure you have a view of the Moon. For those of us on the east coast, you’ll be looking South about 25˚ above the horizon. Those nearby trees could get in the way. Try going out the night before from 10pm to midnight. The moon will be in a similar direction, but about 5˚ higher on the 14th.
21st - 27th – Close Encounter – Moon, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Saturn – The Moon joins the sunrise planet party this week! To set the scene, each morning get out between 4:30am and 5am, and you’ll be able to see Venus, with Jupiter to the right about 15˚, Mars to the right of that 5˚, and Saturn about 30˚ even further to the right of Mars. From left to right, that’s Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn. What happens over the next week or so is the Moon travels through the lineup. The Moon is about 15˚ to the right of Saturn on Saturday the 21st, but moves to about 5˚ below Saturn on Sunday the 22nd. Monday morning it’s between Saturn and Mars, and makes a nice triangle with Mars and Jupiter on Tuesday the 24th. On the 25th, The Moon lines up perfectly with a line connecting Mars and Jupiter. Thursday the 26th, you’ll have a beautiful crescent Moon less than 10˚ to the right of Venus, and the next morning it switches over to the other side of Venus.
29th – 30th – CONJUNCTION – Jupiter, Mars – Just like early in the month, but this time with Mars, Jupiter is less than 1˚ away from a fellow planet of in the ESE. This time, though, you can start seeing them after 3am.
CONSTELLATIONS
Use a sky map from www.skymaps.com to help you out.
After Dinner, Before Bed:
Leo, Big Dipper, Bootes – Leo will be high in the South, almost straight above you. It has a backward question mark with a right triangle to the left of the question. If you look above Leo, behind you and high in the sky, you should find the Big Dipper: seven very bright stars that form a spoon shape. Now if you take the handle of the Dipper, follow its curve to the next bright star you see, about 30˚ away, which is Arcturus. “Follow the arc to Arcturus.” That’s the brightest star in Bootes, which looks like a kite. Take that same curve, and follow it about another 20˚ to “speed on to Spica”, the brightest star in Virgo, one of my favorite constellations, since it reminds me of the Dickinson Mermaid.
Before Work:
Lyra, Hercules, Hercules Cluster – Look pretty much straight above you, and find the brightest star up there. You’ll notice a parallelogram attached to it. This is the brightest star Vega, part of the constellation Lyra, the harp. Next to that is a keystone shaped constellation called Hercules. On the right side of the keystone is a small cluster of stars known at the Hercules Cluster, which is a collection of hundreds of stars on the outskirts of our galaxy. Given how high it is in the sky right now, you might catch its faint fuzziness with your naked eye, but a set of binoculars or a small telescope will really help you see it.
Don’t forget this podcast is found on my Podbean page, Stitcher, and iTunes. There’s also a video version on my YouTube Channel and I can be found on Twitter and Instagram as @mrwebbpv. The Pequea Valley Planetarium and its events and updates are on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as @pvplanetarium.
June 2023
November 2022 - ECLIPSE TOMORROW!
October 2022
Summer 2022
April 2022
Dec 2021 + Jan 2022
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
May+June 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
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