What's Up?

This page shows a brief summary of what interesting things we can see in the sky this month.  

A more detailed version of 'What's Up' this month is available as a downloadable Word document right at the bottom of this page. 

Summer is coming, nights are getting shorter, but it's not dark till late. A good meteor shower but it's during a bright Moon. A solar eclipse meet on Barr Beacon next month.

The Sun -  Is way past sunspot minimum with plenty of activity.

The Moon

The phases of the Moon are as follows:

• Last Quarter - 3rd May
• New - 11th May
• First Quarter - 19th May
• Full - 26th May

Darkest nights for observing, due to lack of moonlight, will be from 8th to the 14th May.

A rare evening apparition, almost touching Venus on 11th May, highest on 18th May.

A brilliant evening object almost touching Mercury on the 11th of May.

Mars, is now setting just after sunset is too low and too far away for good observation.

Jupiter now rising at 4:00 am on the 1st and 2:00 am on the 31st - look southeast.

Saturn rises to the right of Jupiter at the same time.

Uranus is too close to the Sun to observe.

Neptune is not visible, but becoming a difficult morning object at the end of the month.

Comets

No bright comets this month. 

Asteroids

No bright asteroids this month. 

Meteors

The Eta Aquarids peak on the night of 5th and 6th (Wednesday night –Thursday Morning) but a gibbous Moon spoils the show.  

Deep Sky 

• Not dark till 1:00 am, M5 in Serpens (just above Jupiter) and M13 in Hercules are the best globular clusters in the Northern hemisphere and bright even in binoculars. The cluster that is Coma Berenices is easy, even naked eye if you find a dark enough spot and there is a nice two colour pair in there (24 Coma Berenices) at magnitude 5 for binoculars and small scopes.

• Because of lockdown there are no talks, lectures meetings etc, if anybody can think of alternative activities let us know. 
• There is a daily newsletter “The Virtual Meeting” if you want a copy telephone us or go to the website. 
• As an alternative to observing try virtual observing on a planetarium program like Stellarium, It's free although there is a better version if you pay a bit more. (See our Links page for Stellarium Online and a link to the software version that you can download).

• Also there are lots of websites like Astronomy picture of the day where you can enjoy your astronomy and even education sites where you can learn cosmology etc.