The Constellations in Our Changing Sky
 
 

Best Viewing in our Night Sky at 10 p.m. CDT

For more targets... Link to our Night's Sky Best Views page for details

Hercules    the Strongman                     April into November
Her GC

   M13

23,500 lt-yr Great Hercules Cluster, spans 160 lt-yrs wide  ◙  Photo
Virgo    the Maiden                     February into July
Vir GX

   M104

40 mil yr Sombrero Galaxy, huge redshift of 700 mps  ◙  Photo
Ursa Major    the Great Bear                     February into July
Uma GX

   M81,M82

12 mil yr fine pair of galaxies, a spiral and a spindle  ◙  Photo
Canes Venatici    Hunting Dogs                     February into July
CVn GX

   M51

37 mil yr Whirlpool Galaxy, first spiral ever found       ◙  Photo
Coma Berenices    Bernice's Hair                     January into June
Com GX

   M100

40 mil lt-yr biggest spiral in the Virgo-Coma Cluster      ◙  Photo
Leo    the Lion                     January into June
Leo GX

   M105

29 mil lt-yr one of five galaxies in  the Leo Galaxy Group  ◙  
Cancer    the Crab                     December into May
Cnc OC

   M 44

 525 lt-yr Beehive Cluster's 50 stars span 90 arcminutes  ◙  Photo
Gemini    the Twins                     November into April
Gem OC

   M 35

 2,200 lt-yr “excellent,” 200 stars; maybe even naked-eye   ◙  Photo

 

Location of our Night Sky:   29.4200N, 98.0800W


NBAC SKYWATCHERS UPDATES AND CLUB NOTES:

 
Explore Tonight's Sky: Monday, May 12... if the clouds break!

Catch Jupiter before dawn in the early morning hours. Look for Mercury in the West  just after sunset. View the Planets Saturn and Mars in the evening skies after dark.

From Earth and Sky: When the moon comes out this evening in the Americas, it’ll be slightly past first quarter or a waxing gibbous moon. The star Regulus and the planet Saturn both are near the moon tonight.

Spaceweather.com reports a Heavenly Triangle tonight: Ringed planet. First-magnitude star. Gibbous moon. Add them all together and you get a heavenly triangle visible tonight. Look up after sunset for Saturn, Regulus and the Moon in scalene formation: sky map.

OUR MAY ASTRONOMY CLUB MEETING IS AT A NEW LOCATION AND DATE: Thursday, May 22, 2008, The Unitarian Church at 135 Alves Lane in New Braunfels starting at 7 p.m. Turn left 0.79 miles off Hwy 46 South past the I-35 overpass. The church is 0.15 miles on the left

A note of thanks to Global Online Computers Inc. for their support in keeping our Astronomy Club news and information running on the Internet Highway ....Thank you!

WILL WE SEE STARS TONIGHT?                      CURRENT NOAA WEATHER  
Tabular FORECAST  on cloud cover                May Dark Sky nights:  May 22 - 31

Our Moon...Always  changing...  Click here   for current phase

Current Astronomy News and updates...

May 10: Spaceweather.com is reporting that  A NASA-funded survey set to begin in 2008 could dramatically increase the number of known planets outside our solar system: full story.

May 9: Spaceweather.com informs us about a Doomed Planet Transit:  About 1300 light years from Earth, in the constellation Hercules, a planet named TrES-3 twice as massive as Jupiter is slowly spiraling into its parent star. It orbits so close to the star, in fact, that it occasionally passes in front and dims the starlight--a telltale fluctuation that led to its discovery by astronomers in May 2007.

April 25:  An updated report from Universetoday.com on the Nova in Sagittarius. This nova's coordinates are RA 18:05:58.90 Dec -27:13:56.3 . For those who would like to try their hand with binoculars? Aim just a couple of fingerwidths north of the tip of the "teapot" spout. It will by far be the brightest in the field.

Phoenix Mars Lander,  spacecraft is on course for its May 25 landing on the Red Planet. NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is scheduled to land on the Martian northern plains near 68 degrees north latitude, 127 degrees west longitude.

Space shuttle Discovery's STS-124: the launch date is May 31 at 4:01pm CDT. Space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on Saturday, May 3. The canister carrying the STS-124 payloads arrived at the launch pad April 29. Primary payloads are the tour-bus-sized Japanese Experiment Module-Pressurized Module and the lab's robotic arm system. With Discovery in place at the launch pad, the payload components have been installed in the orbiter's payload bay.  Updated from SpaceDaily.com: May 6, 2008.

New Telescope, GLAST: Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope is scheduled for launch  June 3. Preparations continue for the May launch. April 22 a Powerful Antenna was attached to NASA's GLAST Satellite.

The Hubble Telescope service mission 4 The space shuttle's pending upcoming mission to continue maintenance and repair work on the Hubble telescope, which had been set for August 28, will be pushed back four to five weeks, NASA said Thursday May 1, 2008.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO): LRO will launch in late 2008 with the objectives to finding safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment, and demonstrate new technology.


May 12, 2008

Solution to NASA's Glove Problem

Planets By The Dozen

May 9, 2008

Hubble Image of the Colliding Antennae Galaxies (with Video)

Telescopes search for signals from space

Turning 20th Century Fiction Into 21st Century Science And Technology

Stars Orbiting Close to Black Holes Flattened like Hot Pancakes

May 7, 2008

Astronomy Day - May 10, 2008

Photos of the Earth and Moon - From Other Worlds

Snow on Mercury?

Phoenix Landing Area Viewed By Mars Color Imager

May 6, 2008

XMM-Newton Discovers Part of Missing Matter in the Universe

Did Earth Have More Than One Moon?

Comet Strikes Increase as We Pass Through the Galactic Plane

May 5, 2008

Another (Better) Opportunity to Send Your Name to Space

Spirit In A Catch-22: Stay Awake Or Sleep

May 4, 2008

Send Your Name to the Moon

Mission to the Sun

The eta Aquarid Meteor Shower

May 2, 2008

Could Jupiter Wreck the Solar System?

May 1, 2008

New Type of White Dwarf Stars Discovered

Hubble trouble: shuttle mission pushed back

April 30, 2008

Spirit's Dust Dilemma

April 29, 2008

Cassini Watches Five-Month-Long Lightning Storm Rage on Saturn

Supermassive Black Hole Kicked Out of Galaxy: First Ever Observation


 

MAY METEOR SHOWERS: From the Arkansas Sky Observatories

Observe when the moon does not interfere and attempt to observe AFTER midnight for most meteors to be seen!

For May, there are three meteor showers, some of which provide for wonderful spring sky shows, provided that the light of the moon does not interfere.  However, as with all months and times during the year, observers should always be aware that new sporadic meteor showers can occur at anytime from seemingly unknown sources and radiants.  MAY is always an excellent time to go outside and view the heavens and the interloping meteors among them; typically in most locations, whether spring in the northern hemisphere or fall in the southern, the skies are crisp and clear.

Most of May's meteor showers occur early in the month....because the NEW MOON falls on May 5 in May 2008, this is an excellent year to enjoy the meteors that May offers!

May 1 - Phi Bootid Meteors - A really long term meteor shower that actually begins on or about April 16 and persists until May 12, emanating from the constellation of Bootes AND Hercules (the radiant has indeed moved in recent years!), high in the eastern sky at dark, and remain so for most of the night for northern latitudes.  The best time to observe the most of these meteors is always about 2 a.m. local time...this year, the nearly new Moon will not be in the sky at the mid-duration of this long shower, so observing a week before or week after will reveal dark skies and the most meteors.   About 6 meteors can be seen per hour, most medium bright, relative fast and pretty much overhead, all traced back to northwestern Hercules.

May 3 - Alpha Scorpiid Meteors - The peak of this shower takes place during the week of this year's May NEW Moon, so even the faintest members of this meteor shower might be seen, weather permitting for the 2008 display of this minor meteor shower.  The shower is another long duration one, beginning in early April on the Libra-Scorpius border and slowly moving into the constellation of Ophiuchus by May 9!  The motion of this radiant is of much interest to astronomers and your detection of meteors from night to night as to where they appear to originate is very important; the radiant will rise in the far southeastern sky about 9 p.m. local time and be overhead at 1 p.m. the following morning.

May 5-6 - Eta Aquarid Meteors - Normally one of the finest meteor showers of each year, the Eta Aquarid meteors were recorded as early as 401 A.D. by the ancient Chinese stargazers.....now we know them to be part of TWO debris clouds left in the wake of famous HALLEY's COMET through which the earth passes each year.  Meteors can be seen from this shower all the time from April 21 through May 12, but the peak is fairly steep and occurs each year on May 4.....look for brilliant and spectacularly exciting fireballs from May 9 through 11, all of which will be seen dramatically in spite of this year's full moon on this date.  The radiant for this meteor shower is located very near the star asterism known as "The Water Jar" in Aquarius, but moves a bit northeast each day through the long period the meteoric cloud persists around the earth.  Note that this meteor shower for northern latitudes is very low in southern skies...most meteors should be seen coming from the EAST horizon (not overhead like most showers!) about 2 a.m......but by 7 a.m., note that the most frequent meteors appear to originate about halfway from that point to overhead.  On most dates with dark skies such as we will have this year, up to 25 Eta Aquarids might be expected, most bright and leaving glowing "fireball" trails behind them.  This year, the moon will be new and absent from the sky and thus will not hamper observations; this is an excellent year in hopes of seeing many of these fine meteors!


Last Updated:10:49 AM    May 12, 2008

 
 
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