Friday, June 19, 2009

Another Pretty Morning: Update

UPDATE: Well, a lot of use were clouded out today. Tomorrow is a different arrangement by worth trying. The Moon will be over near the Pleiades tomorrow morning. Venus and Mars will still be very close together. The Moon will be even lower in the sky Sunday morning, but will provide a useful guide to find Mercury. Mercury will be almost directly south (to the right) of the Moon Sunday morning. Don't give up quite yet...still some interesting sites to see!

Conjunctions of planets and the Moon happen on a fairly regular basis. The players, however, are constantly changing and we get different combinations at different times.

Tomorrow morning, June 19th, we get a nice trio before dawn. This trio will consist of the Moon, Venus and Mars. The Moon is a waxing crescent. If you have binoculars (or a telescope) train them on Venus and you can see its phase as well! Venus is about half lit right now and even a modest pair of binoculars reveals its phase. Mars is not nearly as bright, but should be easily visible between the Moon and Venus. Mercury rises right beneath the Pleaides later (exact time depends on where you are) but it will probably be very difficult to see in the pre-dawn glow.

This should be particularly nice rising over Lake Michigan!

Here is the sky chart for tomorrow morning...click to embiggen.

6-19-09

I am not that great at getting up in the morning, but will set my camera up before bed tonight and an alarm to see if I can drag myself out in the morning.

Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.

9 comments:

drewzepmeister said...

I'll try to keep an eye out for this!

kkdither said...

If you do get a shot, hale, post for us please. I'm sure I won't be dragging my bootie out tomorrow morning. :)

Beejay said...

But the Peace River gets what????

MinnesotaChick said...

Uhhh.. Looking forward to your pictures! I don't think I will be up!

hale-bopp said...

Well, don't hold your breath...it's not looking good here in terms of clouds. It was cloudy this morning (cleared up later) and its already cloudy tonight. Still will get up and peak out the window.

Beejay said...

Hale, when I was out at 4 a.m. this morning, don't ask about me and cell phones...found it, I saw the Moon and Venus and thought about you...I didn't see Mars, but then I wasn't looking for it either.

sorry, I did not take a pix....

kkdither said...

We had some wild weather here, hale. I was up at 5 am, actually heading back to bed... but only after an evening of tornado sirens blaring and weather watching.

OrbsCorbs said...

Lightning and thunder all night. I blame Zoltar.

hale-bopp said...

Totally clouded out here...summer rainy season approaching so clouds are more common this time of year.