Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday July 6th through Sunday July 12th.
The moon will be at third quarter late on Sunday July 12th so we’ll have a waning gibbous moon all week.
Jupiter is rising at 8:45 p.m. at midweek as it heads towards opposition next week. Saturn follows at 9:10 p.m. and will be reaching opposition in two weeks.
Mars is rising at 12:45 a.m. and will be near the moon on Friday and Saturday nights, or more technically, early Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Venus is rising at 4:05 a.m. at midweek and will be in the Hyades open star cluster all week and will move closer to the bright star Aldebaran as the week progresses.
Mercury is still moving away from the sun after conjunction last week and is rising around 6 a.m. at midweek.
In space anniversaries this week, Sunday July 12th marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Russian ZVEZDA module of the International Space Station. This was the third module launched as part of station construction and is the module that supplies the life support systems for the ISS.
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.
