texas

skywatchers report


Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers' Report for Tuesday May 29th through Sunday June 3rd.

The full moon for the month of June occurs just after midnight in Universal time early in the hours of June 1st. In local time, the full moon actually occurs before midnight, which would make it the second full moon in the month of May.

Mercury is at its greatest elongation in the evening skies on June 2nd. It should show up shortly after the sky darkens, and it will set at about 10:15 p.m. Venus is still very bright in the west at near its highest point that it will reach in this appearance. Saturn is a little further up the line, high in the west when the sun sets. Saturn sets at around 1 a.m. this week.

Jupiter is rising at 8:30 p.m. by the end of the week and is now well up in the skies for evening viewing. The moon and Jupiter will team up for a nice pairing in the southeastern skies on May 31st. Look for Jupiter above the moon on the 1st after the moon rises at 9:30 p.m.

A couple of weeks ago, the New Horizons team posted more photos from the spacecraft’s Jupiter fly-by which occurred back in February. Because of the large amount of data collected during the fly-by, some of the results still haven’t been transmitted back to earth from the spacecraft. In the new batch of images were a series of photos stitched together to make a movie of a plume erupting from Io’s Tvashtar volcano. Logon to the New Horizons website to see the movie and learn more about the mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The address is pluto.jhuapl.edu

Public viewing on UT campus telescopes for the summer will start next week. The telescope at RLM will be open on Wednesday nights and the Painter Hall telescope will be open on Friday and Saturday nights. Please call back next week for full details.

Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers' Report.