[Energetic music]
[Preston Dyches] What’s Up for May?
Four bright planets, morning and night,
a chance of meteor showers,
and waiting for a nova.
For planet watching this month,
you'll find Mars and Jupiter in the west following sunset.
Mars sticks around for several hours
after it gets dark,
but Jupiter is setting by 9:30 or 10 p.m.,
and getting lower in the sky each day.
The first quarter Moon
appears right next to the Red Planet on the 3rd.
Find them in the west during the first half
of the night that evening.
In the morning sky,
Venus and Saturn are the planets to look for in May.
They begin the month appearing close together on the sky,
and progressively pull farther apart as the month goes on.
For several days in late May,
early risers will enjoy a gathering of the Moon
with Saturn and Venus in the eastern sky before dawn.
Watch as the Moon passes the two planets
while becoming an increasingly slimmer crescent.
You'll find the Moon hanging between Venus and Saturn
on the 23rd.
Early May brings the annual
Eta Aquarid meteor shower.
These are meteors that originate from Comet Halley.
Earth passes through the comet’s dust stream each May,
and again in October.
Eta Aquarids are fast moving, and a lot of them produce
persistent dust trains that linger
for seconds after the meteor’s initial streak.
This is one of the best
annual showers in the Southern Hemisphere,
but tends to be more subdued North of the Equator,
where we typically see 10-20 meteors per hour.
On the peak night this year, the Moon sets by around 3 a.m.,
leaving dark skies until dawn, for ideal viewing conditions.
While the peak is early on the morning of May 6th,
the two or three nights
before that are also decent opportunities
to spy a few shooting stars.
Astronomers have been waiting expectantly for light
from a distant explosion to reach us here on Earth.
An event called a nova
is anticipated to occur sometime in the coming months.
Some 3,000 light-years away is a binary star system called
T Coronae Borealis, or “T CrB.”
It consists of a red giant star
with a smaller white dwarf star orbiting closely around it.
Now the giant’s outer atmosphere is all puffed up,
and the dwarf star is close enough
that its gravity continually captures
some of the giant’s hydrogen.
About every 80 years, the white dwarf has accumulated
so much of the other star’s hydrogen,
that it ignites a thermonuclear explosion.
And that’s the nova.
T Coronae Borealis is located in the constellation
Corona Borealis, or the “Northern Crown,”
and it’s normally far too faint to see with the unaided eye.
But it's predicted the nova will be as bright
as the constellation’s brightest star,
which is about as bright as the North Star, Polaris.
You’ll find Corona Borealis right in between
the two bright stars Arcturus and Vega.
You can use the Big Dipper’s handle
to point you to the right part of the sky.
Try having a look for it
on clear, dark nights before the nova,
so you’ll have a comparison
when a new star suddenly becomes visible there.
Now, you may have heard about this months ago, as astronomers
started keeping watch for the nova
midway through 2024,
but it hasn't happened yet.
Predicting exactly when novas
or any sort of stellar outburst will happen
is tricky,
but excitement began growing
when astronomers observed the star
to dim suddenly, much as it did
right before its previous nova in 1946.
When the nova finally does occur,
it won't stay bright for long,
likely flaring in peak brightness for only a few days.
And since it's not predicted again for another 80 years,
you might just want to join the watch for this super rare,
naked eye stellar explosion in the sky!
Here are the phases of the Moon for May.
You can stay up to date on all of NASA's missions
exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov.
I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
and that's What's Up for this month.