What’s Up This Month - June 2009
June 2, 2009
As June arrives, the galaxy fields of spring slowly give way to the beautiful overhead arc of the Milky Way. On June 6, a nearly-full Moon passes in front of a bright red supergiant star in Scorpius. All planets are visible this month, though only Saturn is found in the evening sky.
For observers in the northern hemisphere, the sun lies high in the sky during the day and not far below the horizon at night, which makes for long twilight and short nights. Summer arrives at 5:46 GMT on June 21. But the days now– slowly at first– start getting shorter. (Of course, it’s the other way around for observers in the southern hemisphere).
Life is busy, I know. But try to get out to enjoy a few moments of stargazing. Let a few rays of ancient starlight strike your eye and incite your imagination.
Celestial Events in June
Moon occults Antares. In the evening of June 6, in the Caribbean, northern parts of Latin America, and all but northeastern and far western North America, the nearly-full Moon occults the bright supergiant star Antares in Scorpius. It should be quite a show. This month, you can see the dramatic rise of Scorpius in the late evening as it lurches over the south-eastern horizon, claws first, looking for its prey.
Io and Ganymede cast shadows simultaneously on the face of Jupiter from 8:06 to 10:16 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on June 9. A small telescope at 100x or more should give you a good view. Click here to translate Greenwich Mean Time to the time in your area. The event will look a little like this…
Pluto lies directly opposite the Sun this month in northern Sagittarius. At 14th magnitude, it lies beyond the sight of all but the most determined stargazers.
Moon and Planets
The Moon. Full on June 7; new again on June 22. On June 19, as a thin waning crescent, the Moon is just 6-7 degrees above Venus and Mars in the pre-dawn sky.
Venus. The beautiful planet wheels away from the Earth and dims slightly in the morning sky. On June 6, the Sun illuminates only half of the face of Venus as seen from the Earth.
Mars. Lies about 10 degrees above the eastern horizon early in the month, rising a little higher towards the end.
Saturn follows Leo into the southwest after sunset. But it’s still putting on a good show. The rings tilt just 3 degrees from edge on. Regulus lies west of Saturn and Spica lies further east. Saturn is the one that doesn’t twinkle.
Jupiter. The king of planets lies in eastern Capricorn, low in the sky for northern observers again this year. Observe it carefully on nights with steady seeing, when the image of the planet doesn’t seem to “boil” in your field of view. As mentioned above, in a telescope, you can see a double shadow on the planet on the morning of June 9.
Neptune. Fairly dim at 8th magnitude. Even a good-sized telescope will struggle to show Neptune’s disk, which is only 2.3″ across. But the outer planet is less than 0.5 degrees from Jupiter all month, so you can see them in a single low-power field of view.
Uranus rises a couple hours after midnight. It’s in Pisces, near the “circlet” of stars that makes up the head of the western “fish”. It’s visible in a telescope before the sun rises.
Deep-Sky Sights
The fine double star
Izar (epsilon Bootis) is well worth a look. Separated by just 3″, you’ll need decent seeing and a magnification of 100x or so to resolve the pair. The reward for your effort is the sight of a splendid contrast of color and brightness. The brighter star has exhausted its fuel and become a bright red-orange giant; the fainter is a bright white main sequence star which still burns hydrogen in its core. The pair lies about 200 light years away and takes more than 1,000 years to revolve around each other.
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the double star Izar (left center) in the constellation Bootes
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For southern observers, try
Acrux (alpha Crucis), the magnificent double star at the foot of the Southern Cross. Acrux is actually a triple. The main pair, stars A and B, are brilliant blue-white, and separated by 4″. C is nearly 5th magnitude some 90″ away. The widely separated A and C components are visible in 10×50 binoculars, and a 3-inch scope shows the A-B pairing at 70x or more.
And finally,
June’s Astronomy Haiku…
Darkness falls later,
Testing stargazers’ patience:
The summer solstice
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