2017 Week 23: (June 4-10)

June is now in full swing and the skies get dark very late into the evening.  I was out last night and I could not locate Polaris until after 10:30.  I worked hard on leveling the mount and using my polar alignment scope to align everything to North.  For some reason I had to slew the telescope a little more than I would have thought to find my calibration stars.

This upcoming week does not have anything too exciting.  The next Full Moon will be on Friday and it occurs close to when the Moon is at apogee.  This is sometimes referred to as a 'Micromoon'.  Unlike a 'Supermoon' it is not well advertised on the news.  The difference in size between a 'Supermoon' and a 'Micromoon' is only about 4 arcminutes.  Since Full Moons occur once a month and you cannot see the two Moons together in the sky it is hard for human perception to notice.  Since the Moon orbits in an ellipse there are times when it is closer to the Earth (perigee) and times when it is farther (apogee).

Supermoon vs. Micromoon

The below chart shows the events occurring throughout next week.

Date	Event
June 9	Full Moon (Micromoon)
June 9	Saturn 3°S of Moon
June 9	Jupiter Stationary

Saturn will be just South of the Micromoon on Friday evening.  If you can see the southern sky from your house check it out around 11:30 in the evening.  Saturn is bright at this time of year as it reaches opposition on June 15.

Unfortunately the seeing was bad last night so it was difficult to get a good image of our ringed gas giant friend.  Also, I only have 2 hours of experience with photoshop at the time of writing.

Saturn

An interesting thing happening in the sky on Friday will be with Jupiter.  Jupiter will switch to prograde motion and continue its trek East in the sky compared to the background stars.  Jupiter had been undergoing retrograde motion (moving West compared to the background stars) since February 6.

Jupiter is higher in the ecliptic than Saturn so suffers less from poor seeing.  An image below is from last night.

Jupiter

Enjoy the summer weather and look up to the sky if you are out late at night!