The month of June is name for Juno, the Roman queen of the gods and patroness of marriage and weddings. According to myth, Juno had the power to see through a veil of clouds that Zeus put up. Our latest mission to Jupiter was named Juno and does much the same thing for us today – except this Juno uses scientific instruments that humans designed using the principles of mathematics and physics instead of magic.

This month also marks the beginning of summer for us in the northern hemisphere. This year it happens on June 20 at 5:44 p.m. That marks the longest day and shortest night of the year as the sun reaches its highest point at about 67 degrees, which is our latitude plus the tilt of the earth.

There will be many interesting highlights this month to get us outside under the warmer skies and shorter nights. These include Venus returning to the morning sky and being occulted by the moon, Mars getting close and bright enough to start distinguishing some features already, and some nice conjunctions with the moon and Jupiter and Saturn in the morning even as they both become late evening planets. And don’t forget a penumbral lunar eclipse, an annular eclipse of the sun and two comets.

Venus goes through inferior conjunction with the sun on June 3 and is now rapidly climbing into the morning sky. It is getting smaller and more illuminated by the sun each day even as it also gets brighter. On the morning of the 19th, the day before summer starts, Venus will be occulted by the moon. This will occur after sunrise in some places, but not here. I did watch a daytime occultation of Venus by the moon once about 20 years ago through a telescope. It was a very dramatic event, getting a sense of the real time motion of the moon. An even better way to sense that constant 2,000-miles-per-hour motion of the moon through our sky is just before a total solar eclipse as its shadow sweeps right over you at that speed and also during an annular eclipse as you watch it move rapidly across the sun. It doesn’t cast a shadow on the earth during an annular eclipse because it is too far away, closer to apogee than perigee.

Since the dramatic exit of a very large and thin crescent Venus from our evening sky late last month, only Mercury remains now as our sole evening planet. I watched and photographed the great conjunction of our first planet with Venus unfold for six perfectly clear nights in a row last month. Mercury got within just one degree or twice the width of the full moon, of Venus on the 21st and then kept moving higher past Venus each evening at the rate of about one degree per day. The best night was when a very slender waxing crescent moon – with its ethereal earthshine – joined the pair of our only inferior planets that also have phases just like the moon.

By the middle of the month, Mars will be rising just after midnight. It is now getting close and large enough to start seeing some detail emerge on its surface through a telescope. The red planet will reach its opposition on Oct. 6. The last one was in July of 2018. That was a very close opposition because Mars was also near it perihelion to the sun at the time. This one will not be quite as good, but it will still be the best one until 2035.

Jupiter and Saturn now rise within 15 minutes of each other just before midnight. By the end of the month they will be rising about an hour after sunset. They are both in retrograde motion now approaching their oppositions next month. They are both still getting higher and brighter and closer to Earth. Watch a waning gibbous moon pass right under Jupiter on the June 8 and right under Saturn on the June 9.

Since it is eclipse season again, we will get two eclipses this month, a penumbral lunar and an annular solar eclipse, but neither one will be visible anywhere over this country. Due to the “magic” of the internet and communications satellites, we can still watch both of these events live on channels like NASA and slooh.com and many others, but it is not the same as being there in person for the full experience that everyone would interpret differently. I can certainly attest to that having directly witnessed the American solar eclipse over Idaho nearly 3 years ago. It was a completely above-this-world and into-the-wider-solar system and universe experience that you could never get just by watching it. You have to be there and participate in the event and let it teach you more about what is really happening all the time.

The annular eclipse will take place at new moon on the 21st, the day after the summer solstice. It will start in central Africa and end over Taiwan. The moon is near apogee, so it will be just a little too small and far away to completely cover the sun. It will create a brilliantly glowing ring around the sun, sometimes called a ring of fire. You might even be able to see Bailey’s beads and some prominences, but the living and pulsing corona or atmosphere of the sun will not be blazing forth in all of its glory, reaching way out into space many times its diameter.

The lunar eclipse will only be a partial penumbral one that will happen at full moon on June 5. I have seen many total lunar eclipses since they are much more common than total solar eclipses and they are visible over half the earth instead of just a narrow path less than 100 miles wide. They are not nearly as dramatic or enlightening as solar eclipses, but they do reveal an interesting glimpse into the nature of Earth’s atmosphere as you watch our colorful shadow slowly sweep across the moon, essentially enabling you to see all of the sunrises and sunsets on Earth simultaneously projected onto the moon.

JUNE HIGHLIGHTS

June 3: The Hale 200-inch telescope at Mt. Palomar was dedicated in 1948.

June 4: In 2000, the Compton Gamma Ray telescope re-entered our atmosphere after 10 years of observations of high-energy events in our universe.

June 5: Full moon is at 3:13 p.m. This is also called the Rose or Strawberry Moon. In 1989, Voyager 2 made its closest encounter with Neptune. The last transit of Venus until the year 2117 across the face of the sun happened in 2012.

June 13: The last quarter moon is on 2:25 a.m. It will pass close to Mars this morning. Pioneer 10 left the solar system in 1983.

June 16: In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

June 19: Venus is occulted by the moon this morning.

June 20: Summer starts at 5:44 p.m.

June 21: New moon is at 2:42 am. An annular solar eclipse happens today.

June 29: George Ellery Hale was born in 1868. He designed and created the four biggest telescopes in the world, starting with his 40-inch refractor at Yerkes and ending with his 200-inch reflector at Palomar.

Bernie Reim is co-director of the Astronomical Society of Northern New England.

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