Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday June 1st through Sunday June 7th.

The moon was full on Sunday May 31st and won’t reach first quarter until Monday June 8th, so we’ll have a waning gibbous moon for all of this week.

Mercury continues to move away from the Sun and its last conjunction and is setting an hour and a half after the Sun at midweek.

Venus and Jupiter will continue to move closer to one another in the western skies after sunset, with Venus setting at 11:10 p.m. at midweek, with Jupiter following 10 minutes later. The two planets will reach their smallest separation next week.

In the morning skies, Saturn is rising at 3:20 a.m., now over three hours before sunrise. Mars is rising at 4:40 a.m., a little under two hours before the Sun.

In space anniversaries this week, Tuesday June 2 marks 60 years since Surveyor 1 became the first United States spacecraft to land on the Moon. Surveyor 1’s mission was to gather information about the lunar surface in preparation for the upcoming human landings as part of the Apollo program. It operated for 7 months on the lunar surface and returned over 11 thousand images before the mission concluded on January 7, 1967.

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.