Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, June 1, 2012.
It's a remarkable week with a pair of special events. We begin it
with the Moon in its waxing gibbous phase as it heads to full on the morning of Monday, June 4, when
it will undergo a
partial eclipse (never fully entering the Earth's dark shadow)
shortly before (or after) Moonset, depending on where you are.
East coasters are out of luck, while west coasters get to see the
whole thing. The Moon enters the Earth's dark shadow at 5 AM CDT
(3 AM PDT, etc.). The middle, with the Moon only partially within
the shadow, takes place at 6 AM CDT (4 AM PDT), the central parts
of the US and Canada now running out their own luck. It's pretty
much over at 5 AM Pacific Daylight time. After that, the Moon
enters the waning gibbous phase, where it
resides until the morning of Monday, June 11, when it passes third quarter high in the sky.
The big event, the whopper, is the transit of Venus, which will take place the
evening of Tuesday, June 5.
The transit begins at 5:05 CDT (6:05 EDT, 3:05
PDT) and runs until sunset in the contiguous US and Canada,
Alaskans seeing the whole thing, which takes about 6.5 hours.
Though barely visible to the naked eye, it's really a telescopic
event. NOTE though that the Sun is much too bright to look at, so
observing the transit absolutely requires the use of a
professionally made solar filter! Transits of Venus, when the planet runs in front of the Sun during its solar
conjunction, are rare indeed. They come in pairs in June and
December, the last one taking place on June 8, 2004. The previous
pair occurred in December of 1874 and
there were none in the
twentieth century at all. You'll have to wait until 2117 for the
next one. Venus will thereafter rather quickly make an appearance
in the morning sky.
As Jupiter is doing now, the giant planet rising during mid-
dawn and still a tough catch.
Mars and Saturn do much better. The ringed planet now transits the
meridian to the south in mid-evening
twilight a few degrees to the north of Spica in Virgo. To the west, south of classical Leo and to the southeast of Regulus, find Mars, which now sets
just after local midnight (1 AM Daylight Time). The pairing of the
planets with first magnitude stars is especially pretty. In
invisible news, the Moon runs in front of dim Pluto on the same day as the transit of Venus, but only as
seen from Antarctica.
Saturn not only highlights Spica, but Arcturus in Bootes (the Herdsman), which lies to the north-
northeast, the trio making a fine picture. Then look to the
northeast of Arcturus to spot the lovely semicircle of stars that
makes Corona Borealis, the Northern