By Melanie McQuigg (Y12)
Get ready to enjoy another action-packed week in astronomy. Over the coming days, the late night and early morning skies will play host to three stunning planetary pairings. The best part is that you won’t need a massive telescope to be able to enjoy the show as most of these spectacles will be visible to the naked eye. From the brilliant embrace of Venus and Jupiter at dusk to the Moon’s early morning dances with Saturn and Mars, here is your ultimate guide to the week’s best stargazing highlights…
Venus and Jupiter pair up – 7th of June
The most brilliant highlight of the week takes place in the early evening hours, making it an ideal target to look out for on your way home from school. Venus and Jupiter, which are the two of the brightest planets in our night sky, will undergo a spectacularly close conjunction low on the western horizon. A conjunction is an astronomical event that occurs when two or more planets appear exceptionally close to each other in the night sky. From our perspective, on Earth, they appear to be touching even though they are actually millions of kilometers apart in deep space. As twilight fades, these two distinct worlds will appear to be remarkably close to one another within the Gemini constellation, resembling two intense, brilliant diamonds set against the deep blue of the darknening dusk sky. As the evening star and the gas giant will be so close to each other and the horizon, your view of them can easily be obstructed, so although you will be able to spot them with the naked eye due to their sheer magnitude and intense brightness, a clear view of the horizon is necessary. The best viewing time for this stunning planetary event will be right after sunset but be quick as they will dissappear and sink below the horizon at around 22:30.
Last Quarter Moon meets Saturn – 9th of June
This is the event for morning observers and early risers. This morning, the focus of the sky shifts towards the southeast during the pre-dawn hours, as the Moon partners up with the famous ringed planet. Having just passed its Last Quarter phase, the Moon will appear as a thick, high-contrast waning crescent within the Pisces constellation. This particular lunar phase is highly favored by astronomers as the sun strikes the rugged lunar landscape from a sharp side-angle, casting incredibly long and dramatic shadows inside the craters and along the edges of the mountain ranges. This unique lighting creates a stark, three-dimensional topography along the terminator line, which is the dividing boundary between the light and dark sides of the Moon. On this specfic morning, the shrinking crescent Moon will slide directly alongside Saturn, creating a beautiful wide-angle pairing that is easily visible to the naked eye but a telescope or binoculars will be needed to see the Moon’s craters in depth. Make sure to look towards the southeast before 6am, if you dare to awake that early, and you will be able to see the silver curve of the crescent resting near the steady, yellowish-gold light of the Ringed Giant, which easily distinguishes itself from the twinkling stars nearby.
Crescent Moon and Mars alignment – 12th of June
As the week concludes, the pre-dawn sky presents us with a wonderful multi-planetary display that will reward anyone willing to venture outside roughly an hour before sunrise. This morning, a very thin, waning crescent Moon, that is illuminated at less than fifteen percent of its total brightness, will descend very low toward the eastern horizon and position itself right next to Mars. While Mars is currently somewhat faint to the naked eye, the bright sliver of our nearby Moon will act as an excellent celestial signpost to help you to pinpoint the exact location of the Red Planet. You will be able to view this with the naked eye but if you are using a telescope or binoculars, you will observe that this beautiful alignment is actually part of a much larger planetary arc that spans across the morning sky. This group features Saturn, Mars and Neptune that will all be aligned in the same sector of the horizon just before the sun rises. As the Moon and Mars will be hanging exceptionally low right before the break of dawn, you will need to find an area with a relatively unobstructed view of the horizon.