May 3, 2006
May Astronomy Note 2006
The full moon this month, on 13th, is called the Planting Moon or Milk Moon.
Jupiter is visible almost all night and is at its brightest of the year. A small 6 or 8 inch reflector
should resolve belts, zones, and perhaps spots and swirls.
Saturn and Mars move slightly closer to each other and appear in the Western sky in the evenings, with Saturn much brighter.
Mercury has whipped past superior conjunction with the Sun and now appears in the evening sky, near the horizon, visible about 45 minutes or an hour after the Sun has set and the sky has darkened suitably.
Venus becomes about 3/4 full, but is moving away from us, so it dims.
The big deal this month will be a comet. More precisely, whether it still exists. Comet 73P Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (ZW-3) was discovered in 1930. It travels very close to Earth's orbit, but we have often been on opposite sides of the Sun when it has passed our orbit, so it has often been missed. In 1995 it broke into at least 4 pieces. 3 pieces were observed in 2001, nothing since that year. If a large piece still exists, and ZW-3 hasn't been reduced to a tail without a body, it may well be visible to the naked eye, traveling from West to East and descending North to South. It would be closest to Earth (only .07 a.u.'s) on May 13th, the same day that it is same distance from the Sun as Earth is (1 a.u.). It would likely appear as a hazy star, perhaps with a faint tail streaming away from us, but on or about 24-25 May sweeping across us and our sky.
Posted by hargers at May 3, 2006 9:33 PM