LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The king and queen of planets, Jupiter and Venus, cozy up throughout the month of June.
Look to the west as the sky grows dark. You will see the two brightest objects in the night sky – after the moon – appear close to one another.
On June 30 they will be just 0.3 degrees apart. The sky is divided into 360 degrees.
Through a telescope, this will be a dramatic sight!
When two celestial bodies appear close to one another, it is termed a “conjunction,” hence the use of the term “conjoin” in the title of this month's column.
Objects that are in conjunction aren’t really close to one another – they just appear that way due to the way things visually line up in the night sky.
Speaking of conjunctions, Saturn and the Moon will appear very close on June 29, 2 degrees apart.
Rising in the east is the constellation Hercules, the strongman in Greek mythology.
Within Hercules lies one of the sky’s finest telescope objects – M13, the great globular cluster. Our star chart above shows the location of this object.
“M13” refers to its place in the Messier catalog of deep sky objects. Messier was a famous French astronomer who cataloged 110 similar objects.
A globular cluster consists of thousands of stars that appear relatively close to one another. M13 contains over 300,000 stars!
To view M13 through a telescope, you have to use a technique known as “averted vision.”
Averted vision is looking slightly away from the center of an object. This allows the eye to see faint objects, and in this way some of the individual stars can be seen.
John Zimmerman is a resident of Lake County and has been an amateur astronomer for more than 50 years. For more information about astronomy and local resources, visit his Web site at www.lakecountyskies.com .