Cloudy with a hint of Moon - Jupiter, & Mars

Summer astronomy students practicing
how to measure altitude and azimuth.

The first observing session for our summer astronomy group was for the sole purpose of teaching how to measure altitude and azimuth in our sky. Unfortunately, the clouds where plentiful, the sky was bright, and the stars were either too faint to be seen in the breaks, or covered by the clouds. Luckily, the Moon was bright enough to present itself as a target for everyone to practice their measurements on. It was a waxing gibbous with craters and mountains that stood out along the terminator, and was quite the view despite the haze.
 

Measuring Altitude

In addition to the Moon, we were fortunate to see not one, but two planets! Jupiter was bright enough to shine through the clouds, yet through the telescope it was very difficult to see it's moons. The major reason the moons in the telescope were faint was because it was still the evening twilight, the sky wasn't dark yet! While the summer night sky is filled with spectacular stars and constellations, the Sun doesn't set until late in the evening , 8:40 pm in early May to around 9:15 pm in June. This means that the twilight period where the skies are still bright may go up to about 10:30 pm during the summer solstice.

In any case, the summer constellations are plentiful, and as we make our way through May, we're starting to see some new constellations rise in the East, and some familiar ones starting to set in the West.

Waxing gibbous phase on May 8th, 2014.
The sky was too cloudy and hazy.
Image captured through telescope.

We've had quite a clear nights since the start of the semester - and just this weekend we were predicted to have had an intense meteor shower, but the predictions were wrong, and as of this moment they have declassified the Camelopardalis Meteor Shower as a "non-shower" event with only a few meteors here and there (instead of the 100-200 per hour you might have read on the news). The sky however is always full of surprises, you may never know what to expect unless you keep looking up!

- SHH