What's in the Sky - May 2024

Get outside with your telescope on clear May evenings to see celestial treats! With weather warming and skies clearing up, there's no shortage of celestial delicacies to view with telescopes and binoculars — and just your unaided eyes. Here are a few of our top suggestions for May observing:

Eta Aquariid Meteor Shower
Leave the telescope in the garage and just use your eyeballs to watch the Eta Aquariid meteor shower, one of two annual showers caused by dust particles from Halley's Comet. It will peak this year in the pre-dawn hours of May 6, yielding up to about 20 meteors per hour here in the northern hemisphere. The Moon will be just a couple days from new, so the sky should be nice and dark away from city lights, for a great view. The Aquariids will appear to emanate from the constellation Aquarius, which will be low in the east-southeast, but the meteors can be spotted anywhere in the sky.

New Moon, Dark Skies
Take advantage of the dark (nighttime) skies provided by the New Moon on May 8 to scope out the many star clusters, galaxies, and other deep-sky gems May has to offer. A few nights before and after the 8th, when the Moon is just a sliver, will also provide excellent opportunities for plying the night skies.

Mercury at Greatest Western Elongation
For all you planet hounds, you're going to want to check out Mercury just before sunrise on May 9, as it reaches greatest western elongation of 26.4 degrees from the Sun. That's when it rises highest above the horizon in the morning sky — which isn't very high! — so it's your best opportunity to have a look at it. Look due east. With a telescope, you'll see that Mercury is in a crescent phase, 41% illuminated. As a bonus, look a little up and to the right from Mercury to spot Mars, and a little up and to the right of Mars to see Saturn. The three planets are nicely aligned on this early morning!

Four Big Planetary Nebulae
Use a 6" or larger telescope and an Oxygen-III or UltraBlock filter to catch nice views of four relatively large planetary nebulae in May skies. See the "Ghost of Jupiter," NGC 3242 in Hydra; M97, "the Owl Nebula" in the Big Dipper; NGC 4361 in Corvus; and the famous "Ring Nebula", M57 in Lyra, just a few degrees from bright star Vega. To help you locate these objects, use Orion's DeepMap 600 folding star chart.

Saturn and Moon Conjunction
A pretty pairing of the nearly quarter Moon and Saturn will grace the pre-dawn twilight on May 31. The two orbs will be separated by less than 2 degrees, as viewed from the northern hemisphere, near the horizon in Aquarius. They should make for a wonderful view in binoculars.

May's Challenge Object
This month's challenge object is actually a three-fer: the Draco Trio, or Draco Group, of galaxies (see the Featured Image, at left). It is a remarkable, tight grouping of three faint galaxies — remarkable because each in the picturesque linear array looks distinctly different from the other two. NGC 5985 is a nearly face-on spiral galaxy, while NGC 5982, the middle member, is a fuzzy E3 elliptical. Beside it lies NGC 5981, a sharp edge-on spiral. Both 5985 and 5982 are visible in telescopes as small as 8" from a dark site, but of course larger apertures will provide a better view. NGC 5891, the edge-on, is much fainter and more difficult to discern visually. Some viewers report seeing 5985 and 5982 without ever glimpsing 5981. Others can only see any of them by using averted vision. The trio also makes a great target for astrophotography. Whether you prefer visual observing or astro-imaging, why not give the Draco Trio a try when the Moon is out of the way and see what you get?

All objects described above can easily be seen with the suggested equipment from a dark sky site and on a night when bright moonlight does not overpower the stars.