What's Up for June? A planetary necklace!

If you were to pick a weekend for all-night stargazing, this weekend would an excellent choice! From dusk on Saturday all the way to dawn on Sunday you'll be treated to a starry necklace of planets, all strung out along the ecliptic plane of our solar system. By midnight or so the Milky Way will begin to span the sky, too! It will be possible to see all 8 planets, 10 if you count Ceres and Pluto (from a dark sky, that is). ;-) Planetary jewelry is topic of the June what's Up podcast, by the way, which you can download from the Solar System Exploration website, complete with additional links. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/whatsup-archive.cfm Also on the JPL website: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ and YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=JPLnews#g/u In addition to the great planet lineup, early risers will also see a comet, and an asteroid or minor planet, plus you can hunt for Pluto, now demoted to dwarf planet status, but still very special. To see the comet - Comet C/2009 R1 (McNaught) scan the NE sky with your binoculars 15 -20 degrees above the horizon - it will be near the brightest star of Perseus, Alpha Persei or Mirfak - ahhh, that was where the pretty Comet Holmes was just two years ago! It is on the edge of naked eye visibility, which is made difficult due to the low horizon + the nearness of dawn. Comet McNaught gets 1 degree lower every night after the 15th, until it is lost from our view as it reaches perihelion, or its closest approach to the sun on July 2nd. This weekend is the best and nearly the last time to see it. If you snooze through this one you will definitely lose! Minor planets? Dwarf planets? You betcha! Ceres and Pluto are to be found right smack in the thickest part of the summer Milky Way - in the "steam" rising from teapot-shaped Sagittarius constellation. Pluto skims the star cluster M24 and Ceres just stepped out of the Lagoon Nebula, M8. Both the "M's" are naked eye clumps in the Milky Way, and glorious in binoculars. Early morning just before looking for comet McNaught will be a fine time to hunt these two down from a dark sky with a good skychart or star tour guide. From the greater LA area you can still see the brighter planets and you can try for the comet. It doesn't rise until 2 am and the best time to see it will be when it is as high as it gets, just before the the crack of dawn. You need a pretty decent flat horizon (aka no mountains, hills, trees, buildings) to your Northeast. It will only be about 20 degrees above the horizon at its highest. You may see the comet, and some of the faint tail. You won't see the detail shown in astrophotos - those are time exposures, and our eyes don't have those settings, unfortunately. :-( Almost every month your Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers step away from the sidewalk, drive 150+ miles each way, take big and small telescopes out to some of Southern California's great dark sky locations. We are happy to take friends on star tours - but ask first as some of our locations only have room for a couple extra cars (also no trucks or RV's this weekend for example) You can enjoy the darker skies all summer long from many city, state and national parks with nothing more than a pair of binoculars! Pencil in these dates to check against your calendars - these are the dark sky weekends. The week before these is also decent. June 12, July 10, August 7th and September 4+11. September 4th some of us will be at Glacier Point in Yosemite serving up free public stargazing. Anyone in the park is welcome to attend and look through the San Jose Astronomical Association's member telescopes, if you are hiking in the day, bring layers for the night. Glacier Point has astronomy every weekend from July 4 - Labor Day, with different astronomy clubs from Northern California sponsoring each weekend, except for the full moon. Members bring telescopes, guests get looks all night long, weather and telescope operator endurance permitting, that is. That's all for this month, :-) Sky and Telescope comet charts http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/94277259.html Charts for Pluto, Neptune, Uranus - scroll to bottom http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance Ceres finder chart: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/94737944.html -- Jane Houston Jones Monrovia, CA My blog about Jupiter impacts: http://jane.whiteoaks.com/ My What's Up podcast June 2010: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/whatsup.cfm Twitter: http://twitter.com/jhjones http://twitter.com/CassiniSaturn