Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday May 5th through Sunday May 11th.

The moon was at first quarter on Sunday May 4th and will reach full on Monday May 12th, so we’ll have a waxing gibbous moon all of this week.

Jupiter is in the west after sunset and is setting at 10:50 p.m. at midweek.

Mars is high in the southwest as night falls and is setting at 2:05 a.m.

Over in the morning skies, Saturn is rising at 4:25 a.m., followed by Venus about 10 minutes later. Mercury is sinking back towards the sun and rising at 5:45 a.m. at midweek.

In space anniversaries this week, the month of May marks 20 years since the Voyager 1 spacecraft was announced to have entered the heliosheath region at the outer edges of our solar system where the solar wind and the interstellar medium start to mix. After crossing the heliosheath, Voyager 1 entered the heliopause, and then in 2013, NASA announced that the spacecraft had entered interstellar space. This is the region where the gases between star systems becomes more dominant than the solar wind, the stream of particles constantly flowing from our Sun.

Voyager 1 is currently at a distance of almost 25 billion kilometers from Earth and 23 hours of light travel time, with the spacecraft travelling at a velocity of 62,000 kilometers an hour relative to the Sun. Four of Voyager 1’s science instruments are still powered on continue to transmit data as the spacecraft continues to travel into interstellar space.

There will be no public viewing on the UT campus telescopes this summer 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.