Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Sky This Week - Thursday July 16 to Thursday July 23
Moon near Mars, Venus, Aldebaran, Pleiades and Hyades at 6:00 am local time on Sunday morning July 19, click to embiggen.The New Moon is Wednesday July 22.
The 40th Anniversary of the first moon landing is on Tuesday July 21 (Australian time), but the Moon will be a near invisible crescent.
Saturn is visible in the early evening and can be easily seen as the second brightest object above
the north-western horizon. It is about a quarter of the way between the bright stars Regulus and Spica.
Jupiter is easily seen as the brightest object above the eastern horizon from around 10 pm local time. Jupiter's Moons are readily visible in binoculars or a small telescope.
In the morning, Venus and Mars are readily visible in the eastern sky. Red Mars is between the beautiful Pleaides cluster, and the A-shaped Hyades cluster, while bright white Venus is below bright red Aldebaran. On the morning of Saturday July 18The crescent Moon, Mars, Aldebaran and Venus form a narrow triangle, while on the 19th these bright objects form a close square (see above image), making for marvellous morning viewing.
On Thursday July 23 Mars is close to Aldebaran in the Hyades, forming a second red "eye" in the head of Taurus the Bull.
Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm, Western sky at 10 pm.
Labels: weekly sky
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 8:00 am 
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