Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Tuesday May 30 through Sunday June 4.
The full moon for the month of June is on the night of June 3rd so we’ll have a waxing gibbous moon for the workweek and start the waning crescent phase over the weekend. This full moon is known as the Flower Moon, the Strawberry Moon, the Rose Moon, and the Honey Moon.
Venus is high in the west at sunset and is setting at 11:45 p.m. this week. Venus reaches its greatest elongation on Sunday morning and then will start to move back towards the sun and its next conjunction in August. If you look at Venus through a telescope or binoculars that evening, you’ll see that it is half lit light a miniature quarter moon.
Mars is above and to the left of Venus and looks like a small orange star. Mars is setting at 12:25 a.m. at midweek.
In the morning skies, Saturn is rising at 1:50 a.m., followed by Jupiter at 4:30 a.m.
Mercury was at greatest elongation on Monday the 29th and is now moving back towards the sun and its next conjunction. Mercury is rising at 5:15 a.m. at midweek.
In space anniversaries this week, Friday June 2 marks 25 years since the launch of the space shuttle Discovery on the final flight to the Russian space station Mir. The mission was the conclusion of the first phase of the International Space Station program that, among other things, gave US astronauts the opportunity to learn from the Russian cosmonauts’ experiences with long-duration spaceflights. The shuttle landed just shy of 10 days later at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
And five years later on June 2, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The spacecraft arrived at the Red Planet on December 25, 2003, and continues to operate in Martian orbit.
Public viewing on UT campus telescopes has finished for the spring semester. Please check back next week for details on summer dates and times.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
