The middle of this week is forecast to be filled with cloudy and rainy skies, but the early week and weekend may have some clear or partially clear nights. The nighttime temperatures this week are hovering right around 60°F which is comfortable for stargazing. Sunset this week will be passing 8:55 PM, and the sun dips below the horizon more slowly than usual at this time of year, so the faintest stars won’t be visible until almost 10 PM.

This week be on the lookout for the Third Quarter moon, a close pass between Jupiter and the moon, sprites, and famous deep-sky objects. I will also include a brief section about stargazing in warmer weather.

Tuesday and Wednesday try spotting the moon. It will officially be in the Third Quarter phase in the very early morning hours on Wednesday. So to find the moon you will have to be stargazing very late into the night. Or get up before sunrise to catch it at its best. Third Quarter, similar to First Quarter, is an ideal time to observe the moon since the craters on the lunar surface, along the terminator (the line between night and day) are very easy to spot in the harsh edge-on sunlight.

Just before sunrise on Wednesday, while spotting for the Third Quarter moon, look just 10° further east to find Jupiter. It will be one of the last “stars” in the sky as the sun rises. Jupiter makes an excellent target for both binoculars and telescopes. Some telescopes provide enough “zoom” and clarity to make out the reddish and white stripes found in the gas giant’s atmosphere.

The moon is near Jupiter before dawn on Wednesday.

With this being the season for rain and thunderstorms in the midwest, now is the time to look for Sprites. Sprites are a very quick and rare event to observe. They are related mostly to lightning storms but are also somewhat related to astronomy and require darker skies to see. I figured with the incoming rainstorms, the odds of Sprites forming are very low – but not zero. Sprites are colorful discharges into the upper atmosphere that occur above lightning strikes. The phenomenon is still actively being researched.

To spot them you will need clear skies overhead but a thunderstorm that is far enough away that you can still see its cloud tops. If the conditions are right and the skies are dark, a lightning discharge in the clouds will spill into the upper atmosphere ionizing the surrounding particles and produce the colorful red and green Sprites. But be quick with your eyes because they only last for a fraction of a second!

If you read these blogs weekly, you may notice a trend in the spring and summer months: me almost always mentioning the Milky Way spiral arms or the galactic core. I do that for a good reason - almost all deep-sky objects can be found somewhere in the arms or core region of the sky since most of these objects live within the plane of the galaxy. Some notable targets for telescope/binocular users and astrophotographers include the Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Dumbbell Nebula (M27), the North America Nebula, and the Eagle Nebula (these last two are better suited for astrophotographers).

The busy inner regions of the Milky-Way galaxy. In early June, the milky-way is high enough to get a good look at a bit before midnight.

Stargazing in warm weather is fantastic; no worries about frostbite and the night sky is beautiful. It does have a few drawbacks, however: warm and convective air, and dew. The ground (especially blacktop like roads and parking lots) absorbs a lot of heat during the day and radiates it off during the night. This radiation causes turbulence and other optical distortions that may slightly affect the quality of things seen through a higher power telescope (Jupiter may appear shaky through a telescope, for example.). Dew also forms later into the night as the warm moisture in the air condenses on cooler things like grass and your telescope. Invest in or make a dew shield to protect your telescope and prevent dew from leaving water marks or from distorting your viewing quality.

Get outside this week and enjoy the warm nights before and after the rainstorms. Bring a blanket to lay on yourself and the ground to keep the dew off while you look for the third quarter moon, the near pass between the moon and Jupiter, lightning Sprites, and deep-sky objects nested in the arms and core of the Milky Way galaxy.

Clear Skies!

: Jared May: What's Up during the first week of June