Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday July 21st through Sunday July 27th.
The new moon for the month of July is on Thursday the 24th so we’ll have a waning crescent moon in the pre-dawn skies for the first half of the week and a waxing crescent moon low in the west after sunset on the weekend.
Mercury is very low in the west at sunset as it heads towards conjunction next week and is setting just 20 minutes after the sun by the end of the week.
Mars is in the west-southwest after sunset and is setting 11 p.m.
Saturn is rising at 11:30 p.m. and Neptune is still nearby, but you will need a telescope to see the 8th planet.
Venus is rising at 3:50 a.m., about three hours before sunrise.
Jupiter is rising at 5:05 a.m., over an hour and a half before the sun.
In space anniversaries this week, Wednesday July 23rd marks 30 years since Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp independently discovered the comet that would be named after them. Hale was observing from New Mexico and Bopp was viewing from Arizona, and both noticed an uncharted fuzzy object near the globular star cluster M70 and reported it to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, the official agency for such discoveries. Orbital calculations showed that the comet would possibly become quite bright when it passed through the inner solar system in the spring of 1997, which proved to be correct. After perihelion, the comet continued back into the outer solar system and was last observed in 2022 by JWST at a distance of 4.3 billion miles from the Sun. Comet Hale-Bopp will likely come back through the inner solar system in the 44th century.
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 2025 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.
