Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday August 17th through Sunday August 23rd.
The moon is at first quarter on Wednesday night, so we’ll start the week with a waxing crescent moon and finish the week with a waxing gibbous moon.
Venus reached its greatest elongation in our evening skies last week and is now moving back towards the sun and its next conjunction in October. Venus is setting a little after 10 p.m. at midweek.
Over in the east, Saturn is rising at 10:20 p.m. and then is visible for the remainder of the night.
In the early morning skies, Mars is rising at 3:00 a.m., followed by Jupiter at 5:45 a.m. and Mercury is rising about half an hour before the sun as it moves back towards solar conjunction next week.
In space anniversaries this week, Monday August 17th marks 60 years since the launch of Pioneer 7, one of four identical spacecraft in the part of the Pioneer program tasked with studying the environment in interplanetary space. Nearly 20 years after its launch, Pioneer 7 came within 12 million kilometers of Halley’s Comet and measured the interaction of the comet’s tail and the solar wind. Pioneer 7 was last tracked in March 1995 and still had one operational science instrument at the time, and some believe that contact with the spacecraft may still be possible 60 years after its launch.
Fall semester viewing on UT campus telescopes will resume in the next few weeks. Please check back for details on starting dates and times.
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.
