Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday May 4th through Sunday May 10th.

The moon is at third quarter on Saturday night, so we’ll have a waning gibbous moon for most of the week and start into the waning crescent phase on Sunday.

Venus continues to shine brightly in the west at sunset and is setting at 10:30 p.m. this week. If you look at Venus in binoculars or a telescope, you will see that it is distinctly egg-shaped, since it is now only 85% illuminated.

Jupiter is high in the west as night falls and is setting at 12:55 a.m. at midweek.

In the morning skies, Saturn is rising at 5 a.m., followed by Mars half an hour later. Mercury is sinking back towards the sun and its next conjunction and is rising just 20 minutes before sunrise at midweek.

In space anniversaries this week, Tuesday May 5th marks 65 years since Alan Shepard launched on Freedom 7 and became the first American to travel into space, just three weeks after Yuri Gagarian became the first person to orbit the Earth. Shepard’s flight was a 15-minute suborbital flight that tested an astronaut’s tolerance of high g-forces and the spacecraft’s atmospheric reentry capabilities. Just 20 days later, President John F. Kennedy made a speech challenging the nation to commit itself to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth before the end of the decade. That goal was reached 8 years later with the landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.

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 2026 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.