May, 2012
1st — Looking to the west around 9 o’ clock tonight you will see Orion, the Hunter, just above the horizon. Soon, Orion will not be visible in the evening until late fall.
2nd — If you look in the east around 8:30 tonight you will see the bright planet, Venus. This is the hottest planet in the solar system. Because of the greenhouse effect temperatures can reach almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
3rd — Looking to the east around 5 o’clock tomorrow morning you may be able to see the dim planet Mercury just above the horizon.
4th — Public Telescope viewing will be held the James S. McDonnell Planetarium tonight with the St. Louis Astronomical Society.
5th — Tonight’s full moon is called the Full Flower Moon because this is the time of the year when the flowers are in bloom.
6th — Looking to the northwest around 9 o’clock tonight you will see Venus. At the same time you will see Mars almost over head and Saturn and the moon in the southeast.
7th — If you look near the center of the sky around 10 tonight you will see a group of stars that look like a backward question mark. These stars form the head and mane of Leo, the Lion.
8th — Looking to the northeast around 10 o’clock you will see the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper is part of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear.
9th — Looking to the southeast around 9 o’clock tonight you will see the bright blue-white star, Spica, and the planet Saturn. Spica is about 263 light years away and Saturn is 991 million miles away!
10th — Looking to the west around 10 o’clock tonight you will see the bright star, Pollux and to the right, its twin star, Castor. These stars are part of Gemini, the Twins.
11th — On this date in 2009, the space shuttle Atlantis lifted off for the fifth and final repair mission of the Hubble Space Telescope. You can see the fantastic images captured by Hubble at www.hubbblesite.org.
12th — Looking to the east around 10 o’clock tonight you will see a bright orange star called Arcturus. This star is part of the constellation, Boötes the Herdsman.
13th — Looking in the northwest around 10 o’clock tonight you will see the bright yellow star Capella. This star is about 42 light years away from us and is part of Auriga, the Charioteer.
14th — Skylab, America’s first space station, was launched into orbit on this date in 1973. To learn where and when to see the International Space Station in the sky visit nasa.gov.
15th — The atmosphere of Mars contains over 90 percent Carbon Dioxide gas. Looking high in the southwest around 10 o’clock you will see Mars in Leo, the Lion.
16th — Looking in the north around 10 o’clock tonight you will see the Big Dipper. If you draw an imaginary line downwards through the two stars at the end of the bowl, you will find the North Star.
17th — On this date in 1836 Joseph Lockyer was born. He examined the spectrum of the sun and detected the element Helium before it was found on Earth.
18th — Apollo 10 was launched on this date in 1969 carrying John Young, Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan to the moon. Looking to the northeast around 5:30 in the morning you will see the waning crescent moon.
19th — The season of summer is fast approaching. Looking to the east around midnight you will see the bright stars of the summer triangle.
20th — Looking to the northeast around 9 o’clock you will see the bright star Vega. This star will become our North Star in about 12 thousand years.
21st — Although the sun and moon appear almost the same size in our sky the sun is much larger than the moon. The sun is actually 400 times larger than the moon but our star is also 400 times farther away!
22nd — Looking to the northwest around 9 o’clock you will see a thin crescent moon next to Venus. Above and the right of Venus is the yellow star Capella. Venus will become a morning object in June.
23rd — Looking to the southeast around 10 o’clock tonight you will see Mars next to the star Regulus. Over the next several months Mars will appear to move farther from Regulus and move closer to Saturn.
24th — On this date in 1962, Scott Carpenter flew aboard Aurora 7 becoming the second American to orbit the Earth. He made three revolutions, reaching a maximum altitude of 164 miles.
25th — On this date in 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a speech declaring the goal of landing a man on the moon. Looking to the west around 9 o’clock tonight ,you will see the thin crescent moon above the star, Procyon.
26th — On this date in 1951, Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles, California. She was the first American woman astronaut. She served as mission specialist on board the space shuttle Challenger for two separate missions.
27th — The color of a star will tell you the temperature of a star. Blue stars are very hot while yellow stars are average in temperature. Red stars are the coolest of the stars.
28th — On this date in 1959 a Rhesus monkey and Squirrel monkey were launched into space aboard a Jupiter rocket. Able and Baker were the first animals to be safely retrieved after their space flight.
29th — On this date in 1919, a solar eclipse permitted observation of the bending of starlight passing through the sun's gravitational field, as predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
30th — On this date in 1963, the James S. McDonnell Planetarium first opened. The Science Center and St. Louis Astronomical Society continue to host free public telescope viewing every first Friday of the month!
31th — Looking to the south around 9 o’clock tonight you will see the waxing gibbous moon. Above the moon is the star Spica and above the star is Saturn.