Star Diary: 5 to 11 June, 2023

Keep an eye on the supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101, while the Moon passes under Saturn in this week's stargazing guide.

Published: June 4, 2023 at 7:00 am

What's in the night sky in the week of 5 to 11 June, 2023 in our weekly stargazing guide. This week the Moon passes under Saturn, and you might be able to catch a new supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101.

Chris Bramley Hello and welcome to Star Diary, the podcast from the makers of BBC Sky at Night Magazine. You can subscribe to the print edition of the magazine by visiting www.skyatnightmagazine.com or digital edition by visiting on iTunes or Google Play.

Ezzy Pearson Greetings, listeners, and welcome to Star Diary, a weekly guide to the best things to see in the northern hemisphere's night sky. In this episode, we'll be covering the coming week from the 5 - 11 June. I'm Ezzy Pearson, the magazine's features editor. And I'm joined on the podcast today by reviews editor Paul Money. Hello, Paul.

Paul Money Hello Ezzy. Are you looking forward to seeing what's in the sky then?

Ezzy I am. What are your recommendations for the coming week, Paul? Please do tell us.

Paul Well, I'm going to be kind to everybody. Let's start in the evening sky, shall we? Although, to be fair, is getting later and later, isn't it? Now we're heading towards the summer. You know, the light nights. It means that you don't have to wait until at least 10pm, 10:30 before it even starts to get dark. And you've still got quite bright twilight at that point. So it's just the way it works, doesn't it? But let's start in the evening sky. And you can't fail– we've mentioned that time and time again, but we've actually got Venus and Mars in the evening sky. And the beauty is, sort of thing, is like a bit of a dance with Mars and Venus. Venus will not catch up with Mars. Mars will always stay slightly ahead of it. So... But is fascinating to watch the gap narrowing between them. And so on 11th, we're looking at Venus and Mars are they're actually either side of the beehive cluster on 9th. So although they're visible all week, it's well worth looking at them. So I think as they get closer and closer to the Beehive [Cluster]. Now, Mars passed through the Beehive the other week, so hopefully people got photographs of that, but it'll soon be the turn of Venus itself. So it's quite fascinating. But you've got to bear in mind we've got the twilight, so the Beehive cluster won't be as easy to see in the bright twilight sort of thing. So on 9th in bright twilight around about 10:30 in the evening, and they'lll be either side of the Beehive Cluster itself. Now we have to switch to the morning sky. I know, I know. Because a lot of our events involve the Moon, and so the Moon is in the morning sky and funnily enough, on the 9th, morning of the 9th, the Moon is to the far right of Saturn. It's actually just in Capricornus, but literally on the bound... I mean, we can't see the boundaries in the sky, can we, Ezzy

Ezzy No we can't.

Paul It would be handy wouldn't it? To see all the boundaries and the patterns in the sky, it.

Ezzy Would make navigating a lot easier if you could see the lines. Yes, that is true.

Paul Mind you with virtual reality we're getting to that point anyway, aren't we? So on 9th, the Moon is to the right of Saturn. On 10th, though, it's to the lower left. It's almost underneath it in actual fact. And that's over in the sort of the south east. So they're well up. Saturn is well up now to actually observe, if you like. I say, you probably get up in the middle of the night sort of thing. Well worth having a look at. This is about 3:30AM. So the sky is already beginning to get brighter, as I say. So we're almost getting perpetual light skies all through the night. So on the 9ht-10th the moon passes under Saturn it's closest on 10th, when it should actually be at last quarter phase. So it looked like a half moon, but the other half this time, instead of what we see in the evening sky. Then on 11th, it lies in the lower right of Neptune. But you've got to bear in mind, Neptune, around about +8.5 magnitude, it's faint. You've got twilight as well. So binoculars or a telescope really are required for the actual planet itself. It's just one of those things. Now, if you keep an eye out, you might be lucky enough if you keep watching. And of course, you always got to be careful you don't catch the sunrise. But to their far left over in the east, Jupiter is beginning to emerge. Now, being a bright planet, you're lucky because like Venus and Jupiter, the two that you see... The first in a bright twilight sky, they don't have to be dark. Sort of thing, to actually see them, so they stand out reasonably well. So Jupiter is emerging, so see if you can see Jupiter. Now, you have to bear in mind, at the time of recording, we're still waiting for noctilucent clouds! They're supposed to have started. You know, now I haven't got a brilliant northern horizon, I have to say. But I find if I go out into the street, I can look up towards the northeast and so, north west, and I can actually see whether they're there. And I've been popping out and I think the neighbours must think I'm crackers because I'm always popping out, standing in the middle street, looking towards the north, and then shaking my head and walking back in. But they should be starting. And unfortunately the NASA's satellite that usually monitors this thing is faulty. So they're not at the moment get in the images and often they would give us a bit of a clue as to whether they started or not. So it's a little bit frustrating but then it just reminds me of the time. Well, we didn't have a satellite in the past, we waited until literally we saw them in the sky, but hope they soon start.

Ezzy It's recently it sort of occurred to me that I have one relatively clear view out of my back garden that sort of gets through the rows of houses and trees and various things, and that is pointing towards the northeast. So this year I'm going to be on the lookout for noctilucent clouds. I really want to see one this year. So hopefully they'll be some overhead.

Paul They're quite ephemeral and quite amazing, to be honest. I mean, I put them on a par with a good aurora display because you could get a good noctilucent cloud, they're just so ephemeral and wispy and silvery blue as well. And of course, in north east, you either bear in mind you have to be up for that one because that's in the morning sky. They generally form in the north west in the evening and gradually drift round, until they drift into north and then to the north-east for the morning before the sun actually rises. So fingers crossed we, we'll keep looking out for them and you know, you never know you might actually get them. Now it's a funny old week because apart from the Moon passing the planets, that's the major events. But we do now– we're losing in the spring sky. So what I'll call galaxy season, we're losing that. And the light nights aren't very favourable for galaxy hunting, especially face on galaxies.Makes them pretty hard to say anyway, so. But now we're getting into the summer sky and we're only a couple of weeks away really from the summer solstice. Although we've got light skies, the summer Milky Way is now coming into view. And I always think there's two things to this. You've got a) the Milky Way, so you can view it with binoculars and pick out the open clusters, the the star clouds and the gaps, which is the actual dark clouds obscuring the stars behind and also globular clusters. And I find globular clusters because they're concentrated, they tend to be, you know, a little bit more visible than, say, galaxies. So the bright globules do stand out as fuzzy blobs in the sky when you're looking. So this is the time now we can start watching out for globular clusters and the Milky Way as well. So hopefully, you know, with the Moon in the morning sky, you might catch the evening sky. So just before midnight and you get the Milky Way rising over in the east to south east, Cygnus is over in the east and Sagittarius is over in the south east now. And of course, that's where the centre of the Galaxy appears to lie from our point of view. But there we are. Reasonably busy week. But I say nothing very specific, but I do like the idea of Mars and Venus, either side of the Beehive Cluster, so I'm trying to get a wide field photograph of that.

Ezzy I do think that is the Mars and Venus have been particularly photogenic over the last couple of months, so I hope we get to see lots of those pictures. And of course, as always, you can send those in to us at www.skyatnightmagazine.com, go to the Astrophotography section and we always love to see all of your pictures and the best ones end up in the magazine. And one thing that we we haven't mentioned because it only actually happened a couple of weeks ago, which is the supernova that happened in M101, which we have found out about after we'd recorded our last podcast, but is supposed to be visible at least through a telescope of reasonable size, I believe, for the next couple of months. I think sort of probably about six inch up telescope is what you really need to be able to get to to grips with this in the Pinwheel Galaxy or M101. Have you managed to get a look at it, Paul?

Paul Yes, I actually managed to photograph it finally. I mean, it's one of those things that photographically you can use a relatively modest telescope to pick it up because it was so bright. It reached around about just over magnitude +11., which I know naked eye is magnitude sort of like, +6 to +7. But, you know, binoculars can push. You've large binoculars in particular push you down to magnitude +11. So technically the star outshone the Galaxy. So the amount of energy is just phenomenal. But, you know... But visually, you definitely need a larger telescope, a larger light bucket to be able to spot it easily as such. But, photographically stands out extremely well along one of the spiral arms. So it's quite something. So yeah, at least I've bagged it. But I've been waiting for those clear nights and we had a lot of so sea threat and high haze. But I did get it through the slight haze actually. I thought, I'm going to do this. So, so I got the big telescope out and got it on it and I managed to pick up the supernova to 2023ixf

Ezzy SN2023ixf. That is correct. I've had to write it about 17,000 times.

Paul Yes. I mean, you know, I mean asteroids are bad enough when they discover, you know, a comet sort of thing, but supernovae are in a class of their own when it comes to giving them a name.

Ezzy Yeah. One of the other good things about it was obviously, it's in the Pinwheel Galaxy, which is one of the more photographed galaxies out there. It's definitely a photogenic one, which was really helpful actually, because it turned out that a lot of people had been photographing it in the run up to it sort of finally actually being discovered and people went back through the pictures and sort of. Realised that they'd had it a couple of days beforehand, which is been a great boon to scientists trying to study the thing. So that's always great.

Paul That's half the battle, isn't it? Because, you know, usually we catch these things after they've paid, you know, So it's one of those things that you hope that you pick it up just before, unfortunately it was discovered on the rise. So we were very lucky last year. So but, you know, at least I got it when it just peaked. So at least, I mean, it's here, but it takes a long fade. It will fade away over, as you say, the next few months. So, you know, it is a slow decline. So we should have it for a few weeks. But obviously the Moon will be coming up. But a magnitude +11 funnily enough, the moon may swamp out the Pinwheel Galaxy, but ironically, the star itself, the supernova, might actually still be visible. But which would be quite ironic. I mean, it does look funny because it is quite prominent. You know, the galaxy's are face on, and face on galaxies do tend to be a lot harder to see because if their edge on a lot of the light is concentrated towards the bulge. So it does appear intrinsically brighter. The face on is a bit of a nightmare. So it is a case of in the moonlight the galaxy may fade away into the background of the star. The supernova should still be there.

Ezzy Well, thank you very much, Paul, for taking us through next week's stargazing highlights. So to summarise those again on 9 June, we're looking forward to Venus and Mars will be straddling the Beehive cluster, but the pair will be visible throughout the week. Then on the 9th and 10th, the moon is going to pass under Saturn. On the 11th Neptune should be well placed to view, though you will need binoculars or a telescope to be able to see that one. Throughout the week. Keep an eye on the eastern horizon to watch as Jupiter emerges back into the night sky. Keep an eye out for NLCs on the evening horizon, and also maybe keep a lookout on the Pinwheel Galaxy M101 t to see if you can see that supernova. And of course, it's a great time to see the summer constellations as they begin to return to the night sky, as well as the Milky Way and globular clusters, which will be well placed to view from midnight onwards. So good luck, stargazing and hopefully we'll see you all here next week.

If you want to find out even more spectacular sites that will be gracing the night sky this month, be sure to pick up a copy of BBC Sky at Night magazine, where we have a six page pull out sky guide with a full overview of everything worth looking up for throughout the whole month. Whether you like to look at the moon, the planets, or the deep sky, whether you use binoculars, telescopes or neither, our sky guide has got you covered with detailed star charts to help you track your way across the night sky. From all of us here at BBC Sky Night Magazine, goodbye.

Chris Bramley Thank you for listening to this episode of Star Diary, the podcast from the makers of BBC Sky at Night magazine. For more of our podcasts, visit our website at www.skyatnightmagazine.com or head to aCast, iTunes or Spotify.

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