Stargazing Information<\/p>\n
The central event of the month, and one of the skywatching highlights of the year, takes place during the daytime: an\u00a0annular eclipse of the Sun<\/a>, which carves a narrow path across the western United States. An annular solar eclipse will dim the skies along a narrow path in the western United States on May 20, with a partial eclipse visible across most of the rest of the country. After dark, some of the signature star patterns of summer begin their climb to prominence, including the Summer Triangle, which rises in late evening, and sinuous Scorpius, the scorpion, which is in full view at midnight by month’s end.<\/p>\n In addition to our\u00a0May eclipse coverage<\/a>, we have information on the second half of a twice-in-a-lifetime event: the\u00a0June 5 transit of Venus<\/a>\u00a0across the Sun.<\/p>\n This Week’s Stargazing Tips<\/p>\n May 29, 2012<\/p>\n The planet Venus is about to complete its run as the \u201cevening star.\u201d It is quite low in the west at sunset, and sets by the time the sky gets completely dark. On June 5, Venus will move across the face of the Sun \u2014 a rare event known as a transit.<\/p>\n May 30, 2012<\/p>\n The Moon is in its waxing gibbous phase. \u201cGibbous\u201d means that sunlight illuminates more than half of the lunar hemisphere that faces our way, while \u201cwaxing\u201d means the illuminated fraction is growing larger. That fraction will continue to increase until the Moon is full on Monday.<\/p>\n May 31, 2012<\/p>\n As night falls, Spica, the brightest star of Virgo, stands just a couple of degrees above the Moon \u2014 the width of a finger held at arm\u2019s length. The planet Saturn, which is a little brighter than Spica, is just a few degrees farther along the same line.<\/p>\n June 1<\/p>\n An astronomical doubleheader is coming up early next week. A partial lunar eclipse will take place on Monday, followed by a transit of Venus across the face of the Sun on Tuesday. Both events are the result of precise astronomical alignments.<\/p>\n June 2<\/p>\n A partial lunar eclipse will take place before sunrise Monday, with Earth\u2019s shadow covering about one-third of the Moon\u2019s diameter. The eclipse will be visible across most of the United States.<\/p>\n June 3<\/p>\n Earth\u2019s long, dark shadow will take a small \u201cbite\u201d out of the full Moon before sunrise tomorrow. The partial lunar eclipse will be visible across most of the United States, with the best view across the western half of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stargazing Information The central event of the month, and one of the skywatching highlights of the year, takes place during the daytime: an\u00a0annular eclipse of the Sun, which carves a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}