Jared May: What's Up June 12-19, 2022
What’s Up This Second Week of June
We are a mere weeks away from the official start of astronomical summer but the weather is trying to get a head start. This week will bring daytime temperatures up in the 90s and even break 100°F with the humidity. After the sun has set, the temperature will drop into the more comfortable low 70s with clear and partially clear skies for the next several days.
Be aware that when the temperature drops, dew may form on your astro gear so use a dew heater or bring a small towel or, better, a portable hair dryer. Be on the lookout this week for a full supermoon, Mercury high in the sky, early-morning planets, and a space lagoon.
Try catching the full moon either late Monday night (June 13th) or early Tuesday morning (June 14th). It will be impossible to miss since it will be shining at a blazing magnitude -12, over 16,000x brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Even when the full moon is hidden below the horizon, a white glow becomes visible over an hour before it rises. If you observe the bright moon using a telescope or binoculars, consider buying and equipping a lunar filter. This special filter is cheap and it acts like sunglasses to protect your eyes from the blinding glow of reflected light from the lunar surface.
The supermoon appears bigger, but not a lot bigger.
This full moon will also be a supermoon. What makes it so super? Well, not too much except that the moon will be about 15,000 miles closer to the earth than averan as it approaches its perigee! That sounds like a lot but this distance is small relative to the moon’s average distance of 240,000 miles from the earth, so it’s hard to see the change.
If you find yourself up early Thursday, June 16th, look low in the eastern horizon between 5 and 5:45 AM (yes, you will have to be quite an “early bird” to see this). Just above the horizon and below Venus should be Mercury. It may seem like there is a really small window to see Mercury, but this is as good as it gets. On that morning, Mercury will be at its greatest western elongation, in other words, at its apparent furthest point in its orbit from the sun.
Mercury will be at its greatest western elongation in the morning skies on the 16th. This makes it the easiest time to spot it until the next, eastern, elongation.
If you are up early enough to see Mercury, or perhaps up stargazing past midnight, you will be greeted by a chain of solar system bodies. From east to west there will be Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon. The moon will be blocking the core region of the Milky Way so I hope you don’t plan on observing or imaging Rho Ophiuchi around Jun 15th.
A solar system lineup, dominated by the bright, nearly full, moon
Past June 15th, the moon will have moved past the core region of the Milky Way (although the moon’s light will still make observing this region difficult). Try peering into the core region in the southern sky using binoculars and hunting for a hazy object that isn’t a star cluster. You have likely found Messier Object 8, the Lagoon Nebula. This emission nebula shines magnitude 6, sits roughly 5,000 light-years away, and is a stellar nursery. Try taking a long-exposure photograph of this object to reveal its iconic red color.
Where to find the Lagoon nebula (best when the moon is not shining nearby.
On nights when the moon is not nearby, M8 is an easy target in binoculars.
Get outside this week and enjoy the warm and mostly clear Ohio skies – for it to be both warm and clear for multiple nights is quite a rarity. Lay down a blanket or grab a lawn chair to more easily gaze upwards into the infinite sky. In addition to spotting the supermoon, Mercury, a chain of solar-system bodies, and the Lagoon Nebula, try looking for satellites silently tracking across the sky or rogue dust grains that make themselves known as meteorites.
Clear Skies!