What’s In June’s Skies

By Matt Woods

Planets:

All the planets are in the night sky this month if you go outside and look to the east at 6 am. Mercury can be found very low in the morning sky throughout June in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull). It will reach its greatest elongation in the East on Thursday the 16th of June, and it’ll begin to make its way back towards the Sun before disappearing into the Sun’s glare at the end of the month. Venus is up from Mercury in the early morning sky through June. Venus will start June in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea-Monster), before moving into the constellation of Taurus by the end of the month. Mars is located in June in the constellation of Pisces (The Fish) in the morning sky between Jupiter and Saturn.

Jupiter can be in the constellation of Pisces throughout June above Mars, and Saturn leads the alignment of the planets and can be found in the constellation of Capricornus (The Sea-Goat) throughout June. Uranus can still be found in the early morning in the constellation of Aries (The Ram) above Venus. Neptune is located in the constellation of Pisces, just up from Jupiter.

The planets in alignment on the 15/06/22 at 06:00 am (AWST) Mercury’s greatest elongation in the East on the evening of the 16/06/2022

Alignments, Conjunctions, And Occultations:

Conjunctions involve object(s) in the Solar System and/or more distant objects, such as a star. It’s an apparent phenomenon in which multiple objects which aren’t close together appear close in the sky and it’s caused by the observer’s perspective. An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden by another object that passes between it and the observer.

The June Solstice:

The June Solstice occurs on the 21st of June at 5:14 pm (AWST), marking the beginning of astronomical winter for the southern hemisphere, and the start of summer for the northern hemisphere. This is an exact moment when the Sun’s declination equals 23.5 degrees south as seen from the Earth. The line of latitude where the Sun passes directly overhead during the June solstice is known as the Tropic of Cancer, although in modern times, the Sun is in the astronomical constellation of Gemini in mid-June, thanks to precession.

The June solstice means the southern rotational pole of the Earth is tipped away from the Sun and will now begin its long apparent journey northward again until December. The wobble of Earth’s axis known as the Precession of the Equinoxes takes about 26,000 years to complete one ‘wobble’.

Things To Look At This Month:

Pavo Globular Cluster:

The Pavo Globular Cluster (NGC 6752) also known as the Starfish Globular Cluster, Peacock Cluster and Windmill Cluster, is a globular star cluster location in the southern constellation Pavo (The Peacock). It’s over 13,000 light-years away from Earth and over 10 billion years old. It holds over 100 thousand stars in a sphere about 100 light-years in diameter.

The Pavo Globular Cluster The Pavo Globular Cluster third brightest globular in the night on the 15/06/22 at 9 pm sky after clusters Omega Centauri and 47 Tucanae. It was first catalogued by Scottish Astronomer James Dunlop at the Parramatta Observatory in New South Wales in 1827. There are blue straggle stars as well, these are stars which appear to be too young and massive to exist in a cluster whose stars are all expected to be at least twice as old as the Sun. The blue stragglers are thought to be formed by star mergers and collisions in the dense core of the cluster. The bright star in the photo is a foreground star called SAO 254482.

NGC 6752

The Pavo Globular Cluster