See The Biggest, Brightest And Best Full Moon Of The Year As Mercury Rises: What You Can See In The Night Sky This Week

See The Biggest, Brightest And Best Full Moon Of The Year As Mercury Rises: What You Can See In The Night Sky This Week

Forbes·2022-06-13 10:00

A "Strawberry Moon" rises over the Pacific Ocean at Narrawallee Beach, located near Mollymook on the ... [+] South Coast of New South Wales in Australia, June 6, 2020. (Photo by David Gray/Getty Images)Getty ImagesEach Monday I pick out the northern hemispheres celestial highlights (mid-northern latitudes) for the week ahead, but be sure to check my main feed for more in-depth articles on stargazing, astronomy, eclipses and more.What To See In The Night Sky This Week: June 13-19, 2022No prizes for guessing what the best celestial sight of the week is going to be. The first full Moon of summer 2022 in the northern hemisphere is not only going to be clinging particularly low to the horizon, but its also the years biggest and brightest supermoon. Dont miss it! Monday, June 13, 2022: The Moon and Antares StellariumMonday, June 13, 2022: The Moon and Antares The 99%-lit Moon and the bright star Antares will be just 3° apart at dusk this evening. See the two together in the southeastern sky at nightfall. Tuesday, June 14, 2022: A full Super Strawberry Moon Dusk this evening is when to be looking to the eastern horizon because thats exactly when a Super Strawberry Moona full Moon and 2022s biggest and brightest supermoonwill appear in gorgeous orangey hues. Check the exact times of moonrise for your location and get outside looking east. You will be rewarded with a magnificent orangey orb looking huge on the horizon! Junes full Moon is the lowest and the latest to rise of 2022. It rises in the southeast in summer and sets in the southwest, staying as long in the summer night sky as the Sun does in the winter daytime sky. Mercury is at its greatest western elongation today. gettyThursday, June 16, 2022: Mercury farthest from the SunLook low in the eastern sky just before sunrise and you might glimpse Mercury at its greatest western elongation the farthest it gets from the Sun in the morning sky. Super-bright Venus in its apparition as the Morning Star will be a dazzling neighbor. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a fuzzy cloud of dust, called a coma, surrounding the comet ... [+] C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS (K2), the farthest active comet ever observed entering the solar system. Hubble snapped images of K2 when the frozen visitor was over 2.4 billion kilometres from the Sun, just beyond Saturn's orbit. Even at that remote distance, sunlight is warming the frigid comet, producing a 128,000-kilometre-wide coma that envelops a tiny, solid nucleus. K2 has been traveling for millions of years from its home in the Oort Cloud, a spherical region at the edge of our solar system. This frigid area contains hundreds of billions of comets, the icy leftovers from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. The image was taken in June 2017 by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Links: NASA Press Release Schematic of comet C/2017 K2's approach to the Solar System NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)Object of the week: Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)Its not as impressive as summer 2020s Comet Neowise, but if you have a 6-inch telescope you could try looking for C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS). Its been on stargazers wish-list for five yearseven since it was discovered a whopping 16 au (Earth-Sun distances) away, but its not brightened as much as had been hoped. Its currently magnitude +11 in the constellation of Ophiuchus and should be visible from the northern hemisphere until around October. Heres a skychart for C/2017 K2.K2 has been traveling for millions of years from its home in the Oort Cloud, a spherical region at the edge of our solar system. When it was found it was the the farthest active comet ever observed entering the solar system. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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