SkyCaramba

Mars, Venus, and Mercury are evening objects near Regulus this week.

Saturn's close to Sigma Aquarii.

Jupiter and Uranus rise in the morning.

Pluto's up all night. It's hard to see. Its five moons are even harder to see. Mathematics helped prove--at least to some people--that the first known Plutonian moon exists. It certainly wasn't distinct in the first pictures.

Lots of things to talk about this week:

Mercury becomes an evening object.

Mars is close to Regulus.

Venus turns around.

Spectroscopic binaries.

The moon passes Saturn and Jupiter.

Solstice on Mars.

The summer triangle.

Star-crossed lovers.

The first of four so-called supermoons is this week.

The reason for tides maybe isn't exactly as you've heard.

Mercury is missing from the night sky.

Mars and Venus are by Regulus in the heart of the lion.

Earth is at its farthest from the sun.

Do scorpions have foreheads? The one on the celestial dome does, at least according to one of the star names.

What looks like one star in the scorpion is actually six!

Venus pursues Mars in the evening sky.

Mercury's at perihelion and heading toward conjunction with the sun.

The June solstice is this week. A Greek mathematician observed shadows during the solstice, had people make measurements, ran some calculations, and came up with the first known estimate of how big around the earth is.

Venus follows Mars in the space between Cancer and Leo in the evening sky. Saturn stays in Aquarius in the second half of the night. Jupiter's up at dawn.

The story of Apollo taking out his wrath on a servant bird, a bowl, and an innocent water snake is remembered in our modern constellations. But modern astronomers call the snake by the wrong name.

It's Venus's turn to pass through the Beehive Cluster this week. The planet is following Mars in the evening sky.

The moon passes Jupiter in the morning. And if you can see Mercury in the morning, get some binoculars and see a fainter planet and an asteroid nearby.

A meteor shower you might catch part of at dawn peaks this week. For the most part, it's a daytime event. Even though you don't get to see most of the meteors--up to 60 per hour--you might be able to detect them by listening to the radio!

A far south full moon, Mars marching out of the Beehive and Venus heading toward it, and Mercury in the morning are among the other things to know about this week.

Mercury and Venus are approaching their greatest elongations--Mercury in the morning and Venus in the evening. That's when they're farthest from the sun in the sky and can be seen most easily. The two planets are also predicted to be at dichotomy around June 4. But an unexplained phenomenon is likely to make one appear to be in its semi-circle phase around the middle of this week and the other around the middle of next week. Why do the appearances of Mercury and Venus defy geometry?

Mars marches into the Beehive Cluster. Get a telescope or binoculars for a splendid view.

The moon passes by Venus and Mars. The moon goes through northern lunistice. Saturn rules the morning while Jupiter creeps in and Mercury tries.

A Cambridge University student worked for two years helping build a radio signal detecting apparatus. She spent hours poring over the data it produced. And after she discovered the first known pulsar, two other people got a Nobel prize for it. Find out how well Jocelyn Bell took it in the conclusion to the series on unexpected discoveries in radio astronomy.

Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn are our morning planets. Venus and Mars are in the evening with Venus passing very close to Mebsuta.

And hey, the sun emits radio waves. James Stanley Hey figured that out in World War II. But he couldn't talk about it for a few years. This is part two in the series on unexpected discoveries that advanced radio astronomy.