Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday May 11th through Sunday May 17th.

The moon is new late on Saturday the 16th, so we’ll have a waning crescent moon in the early morning skies for most of the week and then the moon will begin to emerge into our evening skies on Sunday.

Mercury is in superior conjunction with the sun on Thursday the 14th when it will pass behind the sun from the Earth’s perspective. After conjunction, Mercury will reemerge into our evening skies over the next couple of weeks.

Venus is in the west at sundown and has now reached -4 magnitude in brightness. Venus will be setting at 10:45 p.m. at midweek.

Jupiter is above Venus in the west and is at -2 in magnitude and will be setting at 12:30 a.m. Over the next month, the two bright planets will converge in the west as Jupiter moves towards the sun and its next conjunction, and Venus moves away from the sun and its next greatest elongation.

In the morning skies, Saturn is rising at 4:40 a.m. at midweek and will be below the waning crescent moon on Wednesday morning.

Mars is rising at 5:20 a.m. at midweek and will be below the very thin crescent moon on Friday morning.

In space anniversaries this week, Saturday May 16th marks 15 years since the launch of STS-134, the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour and the penultimate flight of the space shuttle era. Endeavour flew for 15 days and delivered equipment to the International Space Station before landing at Kennedy Space Center on June 1.

There will be no public viewing this summer on the UT campus telescopes so we can do maintenance and repairs. We expect to resume the regular viewing schedule in the Fall 2026 semester.

While you’re waiting for Austin-area telescope viewing to resume, you can tune in to McDonald Observatory live streams from west Texas. You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on social media and at McDonaldObservatory.org to be notified of future events.

Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.