Come what May.
Here's a rundown of things I'm going to keep an eye out for in May.
The planet Saturn starts out the month of May high overhead near the star Regulus and moves eastward as the month advances.
May 2 - Mars and Castor and Pollux, the twin stars in the constellation Gemini, form an almost equally-spaced line in the western sky. It's also National Space Day.
May 3 - Saturn and the fainter Regulus, separated by a couple of degrees, will not come this close together for another 30 years.
May 5 - New Moon
May 5 -6 - Grab a lawn chair and watch the eta Aquarid meteor shower May 5-6 under a dark, moonless sky.
May 20 - Full Moon
May 21 - Mars lingers in the constellation Gemini until May 21, when it crosses into Cancer. The next three nights will be a great opportunity to view Mars with binoculars or a wide-field telescope as it slinks across the Beehive star cluster.
May 25 - The Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to touch down on Mars.
I love this page. I hope you see Mars in the Beehive Cluster this month. MB
Posted by: Marion | May 08, 2008 at 12:22 PM