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May's "Milk Moon" finds the moon rising later each evening
For May, the Moon will be full on May 2nd. This is the Milk moon. The first two weeks of May will thus find the Moon waning and rising later each evening. It passes six degree south of Jupiter on the morning of May 5th, and is last quarter moon on May 10th. The new moon occurs on May 16th, so the last two weeks find the moon waxing in the evening sky. On May 20, the waxing crescent moon will pass 2 degrees north of Venus in evening twilight, and on May 22nd it passes just north of Saturn. The moon will stand at first quarter moon high overhead at sunset the next evening. It then appears half lit, a wonderful time to explore its craters, mountains, and mare with a telescope.
While the naked eye, dark adapted by several minutes away from any bright lights, is a wonderful instrument to stare up at the Galaxy arching overhead, binoculars are better for spotting specific deep sky objects all along the plane of the Galaxy. For a detailed map of northern hemisphere skies, about March 29th visit the www.skymaps.com website and download the map for May 2007; it will have a more extensive calendar, and list of best objects for the naked eyes, binoculars, and scopes on the back of the map.
 | | Photo Submitted by Dr. Wayne Wooten Arcturus, the brightest star of Spring. Cooler than our yellow Sun, and much poorer in heavy elements, some believe its strange motion reveals it to be an invading star from another smaller galaxy, now colliding with the Milky Way in Sagittarius in the summer sky. |
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Also available as the next month begins is wonderful video exploring the May sky, available from the Hubble Space Telescope website at: http://hubblesite.org/exploreastrono my/tonights_sky/.
Venus dominates the west now, climbing higher each evening; she appears 70% sunlit as the month begins, but will get bigger as she approaches us, but her phase with diminish to 50% at greatest eastern elongation on June 9th, then will retrograde between us and the Sun in July 2007, appearing then as a crescent, much like tonight's Moon phase, visible with 7X binocs. Covered with sulfuric acid clouds, her bright disk reveals no visible details in the scopes.
Saturn is the brightest object overhead as darkness falls. Its rings are closing now, and will vanish edge-on at its 2010 equinox. If the image is steady, look for the split in the two bright rings, the Cassini division, and the fainter crepe ring closer to the planet than the bright A and B rings. You may also see some belts and zones on the planet's disk. The largest, Titan, will be seen in any small telescope, but others will need larger scopes to spot.
To the west, Venus has passed the fine Pleiades cluster last week, and the "seven sisters" may still be seen in twilight. The winter constellations will soon be swallowed up in the Sun's glare, but Orion is still visible, with its famed Orion Nebula, M-42, seen below the three stars marking his famed belt. Next to Venus in brightness is the Dog Star, Sirius, dominating the SW. Below it is a fine open cluster, M- 41, easily spotted in binoculars. When Sirius vanishes into the Sun's glare in two months, this sets the period as "Dog Days".
The brightest star in the NW is Capella, distinctively yellow in color. It is a giant star, almost exactly the same temperature as our Sun, but about 100X more luminous. Just south of it are the stellar twins, the Gemini, with Castor closer to Capella, and Pollux closer to the Little Dog Star, Procyon.
Overhead, the Big Dipper rides high. Good scouts know to take its leading pointers north to Polaris, the famed Pole Star. For us, it sits 30 degrees (our latitude) high in the north, while the rotating earth beneath makes all the other celestial bodies spin around it from east to west. Just north of last star in the Big Bear's tail is the Pinwheel Galaxy, M-101. The beauty of spiral galaxies like it is well seen in Bob Gaskin's photo.
If you drop south from the bowl of the Big Dipper, Leo the Lion rides high. Saturn lies just west of the bright star Regulus, the heart of the King of Beasts. Note the Egyptian Sphinx is based on the shape of this Lion in the sky.
Taking the arc in the Dipper's handle, we "arc" SE to bright orange Arcturus, the brightest star of Spring. Cooler than our yellow Sun, and much poorer in heavy elements, some believe its strange motion reveals it to be an invading star from another smaller galaxy, now colliding with the Milky Way in Sagittarius in the summer sky. Moving almost perpendicular to the plane of our Milky Way, Arcturus was the first star in the sky where its proper motion across the historic sky was noted, by Edmund Halley.
Spike south to Spica, the hot blue star in Virgo, then curve to Corvus the Crow, a four sided grouping. It is above Corvus, in the arms of Virgo, where our large scopes will show members of the Virgo Supercluster, a swarm of over a thousand galaxies about 50 million light years away from us.
We plan to come back out the Ft. Pickens again this summer, with gazes now set for June 15, July 13, and August 10 (Perseid Meteor Shower Watch!). We hope you can make all of them!
For more information on the Escambia Amateur Astronomers, visit our website, or call our sponsor, Dr.Wayne Wooten at PJC at (850) 484-1152, or e-mail him at wwooten@pjc.edu.
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