June 21, 2024: This month’s Full Strawberry Moon is in the sky all night. Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn are in the eastern sky before sunrise.
by Jeffrey L. Hunt
Chicago, Illinois: Sunrise, 5:16 a.m. CDT; Sunset, 8:29 p.m. CDT. Check local sources for sunrise and sunset times. Times are calculated by the US Naval Observatory’s MICA computer program.
Here is today’s planet forecast:
Morning Sky
Bright Morning Planets
An hour before sunrise, three bright planets – Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn – are strung across the eastern sky. The brightest is Jupiter, although it is low in the east-northeast. At mid-twilight, about an hour before sunrise, the Jovian Giant is 5° above the horizon. Find a clear view looking toward that direction. It rises earlier each morning and appears higher at this time interval before sunrise.
Visit Pleiades
Take a side trip to the Pleiades star cluster, over 10° above the horizon and 7.5° to Jupiter’s upper right. If the stellar bundle is not visible, use a binocular, although Jupiter and the cluster do not fit into the same field of view.
Mars
Mars, about 20° up in the east, is this morning’s second bright planet. It is 27.1° to Jupiter’s upper right and over 11° to the lower right of Hamal, Aries brightest star.
The Red Planet marches eastward against Aries’ distant stars, closing a gap to Jupiter. Each morning it moves a distance larger than the Full moon’s diameter seen against the sky. The Jupiter-Mars conjunction occurs August 14th.
Saturn
Saturn, slightly dimmer than Mars and considerably dimmer than Jupiter, is over 35° above the southeast horizon. It appears against Aquarius’ dim stars, although Fomalhaut, part of the Southern Fish, is over 24° to the planet’s lower right, and Deneb Kaitos, part of Cetus, is 23.0° to the lower left.
The three planets span nearly 80°. They seem to be along a diagonal arc that marks the plane of the solar system, known as the ecliptic, and the background stars in this region are known as the zodiac.
Evening Sky
Mercury, Venus
Mercury and Venus are in bright evening twilight, east of the sun, meaning that they set after the central star. Venus is on a slow track into the evening sky, although not as painfully slow as Mars’ reappearance after its solar conjunction during November 2023. This evening Earth’s Twin planet sets 22 minutes after the sun, while Mercury sets over 20 minutes later.
Mercury outruns Venus appearing at the evening greatest elongation in about a month. Venus’ largest angle from the sun does not occur until January 9, 2025. Before Venus’ best showing, Mercury makes another evening appearance during November.
June’s Full Strawberry Moon
The Full moon, this month known as the Strawberry moon, occurs at 8:08 p.m. Central Time, before it rises in the time zone. Locations farther eastward see it closer to local sunset. Another name for this month’s bright lunar disk is the Honey moon, likely related to the name of the wedding trip.
This evening, the moon rises over 45 minutes later in Chicago. By two hours after sunset, it is over 10° above the southeast horizon. It is in front of Sagittarius, above the Teapot’s spout. The pattern’s shape is the modern nickname for the constellation’s brightest stars. With this bright moonlight, use a binocular to see the stars with the moon.
During the night, as Earth rotates, the moon’s westward arc resembles the path of the winter solstice sun. It is south after midnight and appears low in the southwest during morning twilight.
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