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The PlanetsMercury In the evening twilight as June starts, innermost Mercury can be seen setting in the west. To its lower right Venus glows brighter, and after another small span to the lower right of Venus is the planet Jupiter. This is the tightest three-planet grouping visible with the naked eye until the year 2026! The three planets fit within a 5° circle, meaning you can see all of them in the same binocular field of view. Despite seemingly |
Finder map (early June) - 30 minutes after sunset, looking west.
photographed above in ultraviolet light by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA/JPL [larger image] |
Venus is often considered the Evening Star or the Morning Star, depending on which time of day it is up and dominating the twilight. For example, until early January, 2014, Venus will appear as a brilliant yellow star in the evening sky, right after sunset. Located 10° above the western horizon half an hour after sundown, it remains on view until after 10 P.M. local daylight time. At the beginning of June, Venus spans 10.3" across and shows a disk 96-percent lit. By late in the month, the disk has grown to 11.2" and the phase has shrunk to 90-percent illumination. The planet shines at a stunning -4 magnitude, about ten times brighter than the brightest star Sirius, and by far the brightest celestial object after the Sun and Moon. Venus is so bright due to a combination of factors. Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid. These clouds reflect 70-percent of the sunlight that hits them. For comparison, the Earth reflects 36- percent and Mars and the Moon around |
Finder map (early June) - 30 minutes after sunset, looking west.
surface lines that some believed were irrigation canals. Above, a map of Mars by Giovanni Schiaparelli. "Meyers Konversations- Lexikon" Encyclopedia [larger image] |
Mars is very slowly returning to dawn visibility. In late June, skywatchers can use binoculars to look for its magnitude +1.5 speck a mere 5° lower right of Alnath, the star Beta in the constellation Taurus. The planet comes up approximately one hour before the Sun and can be glimpsed briefly very low in the east- northeast during early dawn. |
Finder map (late June) - 30 minutes before sunrise, looking east.
Jupiter
Gas giant Jupiter requires your attention as soon as it gets dark, before it gets too low to observe. In the first days of June, look for Jupiter well below Mercury and Venus, just a few degrees above the western horizon.
After about June 5th, Jupiter will probably be swallowed in the afterglow of sunset and will become impossible to observe. The planet will be in conjunction with the Sun on June 19th.
Jupiter orbits the Sun 5.2 times further out than the Earth. At this distance, the Sun's light and heat are only 1/27 as strong as at Earth, so without any other source of heat the planet and its satellites would be very cold.
However, Jupiter's atmosphere gets almost as much heat from the interior of the planet as it does from the Sun. The heat is a result of the planet's great size, and it seems that it is also what drives the atmospheric storms that can be seen with amateur telescopes as white and dark ovals.
Finder map (early June) - 30 minutes after sunset, looking west.
Saturn
are visible along with two of its largest moons, Dione and Rhea. NASA's Voyager 2 took this "true color" photograph on July 21, 1981. NASA [larger image] |
Saturn reached opposition in late April, and now it slowly heads towards its conjunction with the Sun on November 6th. Look for it in the south as evening twilight fades, to the lower left of Spica and farther lower right of Arcturus. A small telescope will reveal Saturn's system of rings which span 40", surrounding a disk about 18" in diameter. The rings are tilted 18° to our line of sight, the widest open they have been since the year 2006. The planet's ring system is unique, and quite unlike the obscure rings of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. Six major rings all lying in the equatorial plane of Saturn have been identified, of which three, in addition to the Cassini division and a subtler demarcation called the Encke division, can be seen from the Earth with a good telescope. Saturn's rings are made up of many small particles, all moving round the planet in the manner of tiny moons. There is no mystery about their composition; they are made primarily of water ice. |
Finder map (early June) - 30 minutes after sunset, looking southeast.
through backyard telescopes, but you will not see storms or the rings Hubble viewed here. NASA/ESA/M. Showalter [larger image] |
The ice-giant planet shines at magnitude +5.8 (it is a borderline naked eye object under dark skies) and currently lies among the dim background stars of Pisces the Fish, near the constellation's southern border. To find it, wait until 3 A.M. local daylight time or later for this region to climb reasonably high. Then, locate the two stars that form the eastern side of the Great Square of Pegasus, Alpheratz and Algenib. Next, draw an imaginary line between these two bright stars and continue it 15° to Algenib's south. Uranus should now be centered in your eyepiece's field. Uranus was discovered on March 13, 1781 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel, using a 6.2-inch reflector with a magnification of 227x. Herschel realized that the object - at that time in the constellation Gemini - was not a star, but he believed it to be a comet, and indeed his communication to the Royal Society was headed "An Account of a Comet". There was prolonged debate over the naming of the new planet. J. E. Bode suggested Uranus, |
Finder map - field width 15°, stars to magnitude +8.
Neptune
Seek out Neptune just before dawn, in central Aquarius, 1° northwest of the 5th-magnitude star Sigma Aquarii. The distant world lies 2.8 billion miles from Earth and glows dimly at magnitude +7.9. A 4-inch diameter telescope is probably the minimum required to see the planet and resolve its disk, only 2.5" across.
Neptune takes almost 165 years to complete one journey round the Sun, so that it was discovered about one "Neptunian year" ago. Like Uranus, Neptune shows a light bluish color (from methane in the atmosphere). The main constituents are molecular hydrogen and helium; methane makes up a minor amount.
Neptune's atmosphere is marked by cirrus clouds and large storms, most notably the Great Dark Spot. This darker bluish-gray region circling the planet's Southern Hemisphere rotates counterclockwise in a few days. A region of high pressure, the Dark Spot is surrounded by white clouds of ammonia and is similar to storms on Jupiter.
Finder map - field width 15°, stars to magnitude +8.5.
Pluto
astronomer best known for discovering the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930, at his family farm in Kansas. Tombaugh had been a gifted telescope builder - over the course of his life, he built more than 30 instruments. NASA [larger image] |
Next month, on the night of July 1st, Pluto comes to opposition. Throughout June, it can be found in the constellation Sagittarius, close to the 3rd-magnitude star Xi 2 Sagittarii. Search for it well after midnight, under a dark, moonless sky. Pluto glows at magnitude +14, and as a result, it is a challenge to spot. An 8-inch telescope on a perfect night brings Pluto to the edge of visibility. For a direct view, however, you will want to use at least a 10-inch scope. The dwarf planet was discovered in 1930 as a result of an extensive search by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. He used a blink comparator to reveal the motion of any planet relative to the background stars on pairs of photographic plates taken a few nights apart. On plates taken on January 23rd and January 29th, Tombaugh found a faint object which was moving by the amount expected of a trans Neptunian planet. The newly discovered object was named Pluto, after the ancient Greek god of the underworld. |
Coarse finder map - field width 10°, stars to magnitude +8.5.| Nebulae are enormous clouds of gas ("nebula" is Latin for cloud). Our Milky Way Galaxy is permeated with gas, most of it hydrogen and helium, which is concentrated in its spiral arms. In most cases, this gas can form into dense nebulae. If they are illuminated by nearby stars, nebulae shine brightly and appear as wispy clouds when seen through a telescope; if unilluminated, they appear as blotches of darkness silhouetted against the background stars. There is no |
constellation Ophiuchus, the Snake Holder. ESO/Yuri Beletsky [larger image] |
Finder map - field width 25°, stars to magnitude +7.
sky on late evenings. This June, asteroid 88 Thisbe lies 10° to the upper right of Antares, Scorpius' brightest star. T. Credner & S. Kohle, AlltheSky.com [larger image] |
A great way to see the solar system in motion is to track an asteroid. This June, look toward the south in the late evening and locate the twinkling red star Antares (Alpha Scorpii). Normally, 1st-magnitude Antares ranks second in the southern summer sky only to 0- magnitude Arcturus to its upper right. But this year, blazing Saturn also upstages it. Look for Antares about 30° to Saturn's lower left. Antares is your signpost to this month's asteroid highlight: 88 Thisbe. From the star, move your telescope 10° to the northwest and 88 Thisbe should be somewhere in your eyepiece's field. The finder map below shows all background stars as bright as Thisbe (up to magnitude +11). This will help you identify the asteroid using basic pattern-shapes. If you are not sure which dot of light is Thisbe, sketch the field including as many stars as you can, then come back in a night or two to see which one moved. 88 Thisbe was discovered by the German- American astronomer C. H. F. Peters in 1866, and was named after a heroine of a Roman |
Finder map - field width 5°, stars to magnitude +11.
Finder map - field width 35°, stars to magnitude +6.5.
M31, during the first week of April. Brendan Alexander [larger image] |
Comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARRS was discovered in June 2011, using the PanSTARRS telescope located near the summit of Haleakala, on the island of Maui in Hawaii. At the moment of discovery it had an apparent magnitude of +19, but preliminary calculations soon made it clear that this new object had the potential to become a comet of considerable interest for observers in the Northern Hemisphere. By early May last year, the comet had brightened to |
Finder map - field width 35°, stars to magnitude +6.5.
| People spend a lot more leisure time outdoors during the summer months, so it is no wonder they observe more meteors at this time of the year. If you can survive the onslaught of hungry mosquitoes, a June evening can be a great time to view a few shooting stars blazing across the sky. The only equipment you will need is your eyes and a modest amount of patience. The best meteor shower of June, in terms of both sky position and meteor activity, is the June Bootid stream. This well-known annual shower usually produces just a few visible meteors per hour, yet fifteen years ago, on June 27, 1998, northern sky watchers were surprised when dozens of bright meteors suddenly began to stream out of the constellation Bootes the Herdsman. It was not the first time: similar June Bootid outbursts had |
during their fatal encounter with the Earth's upper atmosphere. Yuichi Takasaka [larger image] |
Map - June Bootids radiant position.
Some meteors do not belong to any known shower. These are the sporadic meteors, caused by random bits of comet debris spread throughout the inner solar system. They appear randomly across the sky all year long.
In this month's night sky careful observers can expect around six sporadics per hour during the morning hours and two during the dark evening.
Northern Hemisphere's Sky - This map portrays the sky as seen near 40° north latitude at 11 P.M. local daylight time in early June and 10 P.M. in late June.
Southern Hemisphere's Sky - This map is plotted for 35° south latitude. It shows the sky at 8 P.M. local time in early June and 7 P.M. in late June.
Visibility of the Planets - The table provides general information about the visibility of the planets during the current month.
Phases of the Moon - This Moon Phase Calendar shows the Moon's phase for every day in June.
Jupiter's Moons - The diagram shows the positions of Galilean satellites on each day in June at midnight.
| June 21 - The June solstice occurs at 12:04 A.M. EDT; summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere. Venus is 5.2° south of Pollux (Beta Geminorum) at 11:47 P.M. EDT. June 23 - The Moon is at perigee, the point in its orbit when it is nearest to Earth. Full Moon at 6:32 A.M. EDT. June 27 - The June Bootid meteor shower is at peak activity. June 29 - Last Quarter Moon at 11:54 P.M. EDT. |
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