June 24, 2024: Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn are in the predawn sky with the gibbous moon. Find Lyra in the evening sky.
by Jeffrey L. Hunt
Chicago, Illinois: Sunrise, 5:17 a.m. CDT; Sunset, 8:30 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
Morning Planets and Moon
An hour before sunrise, mid-twilight at this season, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and the gibbous moon seem to be hanging from an arc that stretches from the east-northeast to southwest.
Begin with the moon, 93% illuminated, that is standing over 20° above the south-southeast. It is in front of Capricornus’ distant stars, although the bright moonlight washes them from view.
Each morning the moon’s phase is smaller, known as a waning moon, and it appears farther eastward.
This morning, Saturn is nearly 40° up in the south-southeast, and over 45° to the moon’s upper left. The Ringed Wonder is moving very slowly eastward in front of Aquarius’ faint stars. It begins to retrograde in about a week.
Retrograde motion is an illusion from Earth overtaking planets that revolve around the sun that are more distant from the central star than our home planet, known as the superior planets. As Earth approaches and passes by, the planets appear to stop moving eastward and seem to move backwards or retrograde compared to the distant starfield.
Jupiter and Mars
Red-orange Mars is farther eastward, over 20° up in the east, and over 11° to the lower right of Hamal, Aries’ brightest star. Mars passed Saturn on April 10th and opened a wide gap between the planets that is over 50° this morning.
Mars is marching eastward toward Jupiter, over 5° above the east-northeast horizon. It has emerged from bright morning twilight. It rises earlier each morning and appears high in the sky at this time interval. The planet is not above the Earth’s atmospheric filtering effects that blurs and reddens celestial bodies. At this altitude or height above the horizon, looking at Jupiter through a telescope is similar to looking through a window smeared with petroleum jelly.
Tomorrow morning, the moon is closer to Saturn, but their conjunction occurs in three mornings.
Evening Sky
Mercury and Venus
Mercury and Venus are hidden in evening twilight. Even though Mercury appears farther from the sun each evening, it sets 56 minutes after sunset, before mid-twilight.
Venus, slowly moving into the western sky as the Evening Star, sets only 25 minutes after the sun.
Lyra
With the moon rising later, look for Lyra, the Lyre, as darkness descends. Vega is the bright star, high in the eastern sky, nearly overhead. Representing a jewel on the harp, the star is the third brightest star visible from the mid-northern latitudes after Sirius and Arcturus.
About 25 light years away and shining with the intrinsic brightness of nearly 50 suns, Vega generally marks the direction that the sun is revolving around the galaxy. The solar apex, is to the southwest of the star.
Epsilon Lyrae
Lyra’s brightest stars make a tiny constellation, consisting of a tiny triangle attached to a parallelogram. Epsilon Lyrae (ε Lyr on the chart) is known as the double-double star. Aim a binocular at it. Appearing as a single star to the unaided eye, the star splits into two stars – a double star. Through a telescope, each star splits into another, four stars in total, a double-double. This star is a good test for the quality of a telescope. At high magnification, four stars are visible.
An exploded star, known as the Ring Nebula and cataloged as Messier 57 (M 57 on the accompanying chart), is on the opposite side of the parallelogram from Epsilon, between the stars Sulafat and Sheliak. Through at telescope, the nebula appears as a faint smoke ring.
In photographs made through telescopes, the Ring shows colors with a star at the center. As predicted through stellar models, stars puff out their outer layers at the end of their celestial lives, leaving a dim core.
The Ring Nebula is a telescopic target for many sky watchers to see the ring and attempt to look for the nebula’s central star.
The moon rises near the midnight hour and as the new calendar day begin. Tomorrow morning it is in the southern sky.
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