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NIGHTWATCH SHEET – MAY 2017 Denebola Virgo Cluster The sky at midnight on the 16th. May 2017. All times GMT. New moon: 25th Full moon: 10th. The light evenings of mid-spring present a challenge to Astronomers; fewer dark hours at less convenient times means making the most of the sky when we can. Look towards the south-west at sunset and you will see the brilliant Jupiter. Over the month it fades slightly from magnitude -2.4 to -2.3 but remains a very noticeable object. It lies in Virgo, Jupiter is above the star Spica which is a first magnitude object, yet compared to Jupiter it does not seem so bright. The moon will pass north of Jupiter on the 8th. and will be a lovely sight. Binoculars or a small telescope will show the four Galilean moons and possibly the cloud belts. Your writer had a look at Jupiter through a three inch telescope a few nights ago and was able to make out the equatorial cloud belts with their distinctive ruddy colour and the moons. SO give it a go! Rising at 23:30 mid-month and by 22:30 at the end of the month Saturn brightens from magnitude 0.3 to 0.1 over the month. It is to be found in Sagittarius and so will be low in the sky. The moon passes just below Saturn on the 14 th. Saturn is a beautiful sight and is always worth a look. Although there are only two planets (which are fantastic objects to observe) there are other things to look at. If you find Leo, the star to the left is called Denebola, to the left of there lies the Virgo cluster. (Marked with an ‘X’ on the map). This is a rich area of galaxies which form part of the ‘Local Cluster’ of galaxies to which our Milky Way belongs. There are over 2000 galaxies in the Virgo cluster, many of which can be seen by amateurs – they will appear as fuzzy blobs, but don’t let hat put you off. The light you see form them has be travelling to your eye for millions of years! On this Day… 90 Years Ago – May 20th.-21st. 1927: Charles A. Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Lucky Lindy's single-seat, single engine aeroplane was called the Spirit of St. Louis. It began the flight from Roosevelt Field in New York and landed at Le Bourget Air Field just outside Paris. 45 Years Ago - May 24th. 1972: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and USSR Premier Aleksey N. Kosygin signed an agreement for cooperation in the exploration of outer space for peaceful purposes which included the docking in space of US/USSR spacecraft in 1975. It was signed in Moscow. 5 Years Ago - May 22nd. 2012: Dragon C2/C3 was launched from Cape Canaveral by a Falcon 9 rocket. The spacecraft was the first fully functional Dragon spacecraft on the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) C2+ Demonstration Mission for NASA. It successfully docked with the ISS and was later recovered. The Spirit of St. Louis. The Dragon C2 spacecraft.