Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday May 4th through Sunday May 10th.
The full moon for the month of May is on the morning on Thursday the 10th so we’ll have a waxing gibbous moon for the first half of the week and a waning gibbous moon for the remainder of the week. The full moon for the month of May is known as the Milk Moon, the Flower Moon, and the Corn Moon.
Mercury is in superior conjunction with the sun on Monday the 4th when it will pass behind the sun from the Earth’s point of view and will move from our morning skies into our evening skies.
Mercury will be joining Venus in the evening skies although Mercury will be too close to the sun to see this week. Venus is setting at 11:00 p.m. at midweek.
Jupiter is rising at 1:15 a.m., followed by Saturn at 1:30 a.m. and Mars at 2:55 a.m.
The eta-Aquariid meteor shower will be on Tuesday morning, but all but the brightest meteors will be washed out by the moon, which will be just a few hours past full at the shower’s peak. The eta-Aquariids come from the debris left in Earth’s orbital path caused by a previous pass of Halley’s Comet.
All public viewing events on UT campus telescopes are on hold for the time being. We will update the website outreach.as.utexas.edu with a new schedule when we are able to resume viewing.
While you’re waiting for in-person telescope viewing to resume, McDonald Observatory has been live-streaming night sky tours from west Texas! You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on Twitter and Facebook to be notified of future events.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
