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Scotland’s Sky in May, 2019
Giant world Jupiter becoming obvious in May’s twilit nights

The maps show the sky at 01:00 BST on the 1st, midnight on the 16th and 23:00 on the 31st. (Click on map to enlarge)
With its lengthening days and increasingly twilit nights, May is hardly a vintage month for stargazing from Scotland’s latitudes. Official (nautical) darkness for Edinburgh lasts for more than five hours around midnight as the month begins but dwindles to nothing by the start of June and does not return until 12 July
Edinburgh’s sunrise/sunset times change from 05:30/20:51 on the 1st to 04:37/21:45 on the 31st, while the Moon is new on the 4th, at first quarter on the 12th, full on the 18th and at last quarter on the 26th.
Our charts show Leo diving westwards as the Summer Triangle formed by Vega, Altair and Deneb is climbing in the east. After the Moon, our most obvious nighttime object is the planet Jupiter which rises in the south-east 30 minutes before our map times and reaches less than 12° high in the south before dawn. In fact, look for the Moon above-right of Jupiter on the night of the 19th and closer to the planet’s left on the 20th.
The giant world is now edging westwards against the stars of southern Ophiuchus and brightens from magnitude -2.4 to -2.6 as its distance falls from 678 million to 644 million km. The Jovian globe spans 45 arcseconds in mid-May and telescopes show that it is crossed by bands of cloud that lie parallel to its equator. The four principal moons of Jupiter are also easy targets, though sometimes one or more hide from view as they pass in front of, or behind, the disk or are eclipsed in Jupiter’s shadow.
Saturn trails almost two hours behind Jupiter but is fainter at magnitude 0.5 to 0.3. It lies in Sagittarius, below the Teaspoon asterism, where it stands above the Moon but low down in the south-south-east before dawn on the 23rd. Always an impressive sight through a telescope, though not helped by its low altitude, its disk appears 18 arcseconds wide at mid-month, circled by rings that measure 40 by 16 arcseconds.
Mercury and Venus are too deep in the morning twilight to be seen at present, though Mercury slips around the Sun’s far side on the 21st. The morning twilight also hinders views of the Eta-Aquarids meteor shower which peaks around the 6th-7th and brings swift meteors that stream from a point which hovers low in our east-south-eastern sky for two hours before sunrise.
Mars sets a few minutes before our star map times and may be hard to spot low down in our west-north-western evening sky. It stands between the horns of Taurus on the 1st and shines at magnitude 1.6 to rival the star Elnath, which lies 5° above Mars and marks the tip of the Bull’s northern horn.
Mars’ pinkish-orange hue is best appreciated through binoculars as the planet dims further to magnitude 1.8 and speeds 20° eastwards during May, crossing into Gemini at mid-month and sweeping only 0.2° north of the star cluster M35 (use binoculars) on the 19th. It recedes from 335 million to 363 million km during May but, at a mere 4 arcseconds in diameter, is too small to be of telescopic interest. Catch Mars above the slim earthlit Moon on the 7th.
NASA’s InSight lander used its sensitive French-built seismometer to detect its first likely marsquake on 6 April. The faint vibrations are now being studied for clues as to Mars’ interior. Another instrument, a German heat probe designed to drill up to five metres into the surface, seems to have encountered a rock and is currently stalled well short of its target depth.
The Plough looms directly overhead at nightfall and stands high in the west by our map times. If we extend a curving line along its handle, we reach the prominent star Arcturus which, at magnitude -0.05, is the brightest of all the stars in the sky’s northern hemisphere and, after Sirius, the second brightest (nighttime) star visible from Scotland, although both Vega and Capella come close.
Classed officially as a red giant star, though more yellow-orange in hue, Arcturus is slightly more massive than our Sun and perhaps 50% older. As such, it has depleted the hydrogen used to power its core through nuclear fusion, progressed to fusing helium instead and inflated to 25 times the Sun’s radius and 170 times its luminosity. Eventually, after shedding its outer layers, it will settle down as a dim white dwarf star comparable in size to the Earth.
At present, though, we admire it as the leading star in the constellation of Bootes which has been likened to a pale imitation of Orion or even an ice-cream cone. Bootes takes its name from the Greek for herdsman or plowman, apparently in relation to the seven stars of the Plough which were also known as the “Seven Oxen” in early times.
Arcturus’ own name comes from the Greek for “guardian of the bear”, another reference to its role in following Ursa Major across the sky. In truth, it is something of a temporary guardian since it is rushing past our solar system at 122 km per second at a distance of 36.7 light years and will likely fade from naked-eye view within (only) half a million years as it tracks south-westwards in the direction of Virgo and the bright star Spica.
It is in the north of Virgo, and roughly coincident with the “D” of the label for Denebola on our south star map, that we find the galaxy M87, the owner of the supermassive black hole whose image was released a few weeks ago. M87 is 54 million light years away and visible as a smudge in small telescopes.
Diary for 2019 May
Times are BST
5th 00h New moon
6th 15h Peak of Eta-Aquarids meteor shower
6th 23h Moon 2.3° N of Aldebaran
8th 01h Moon 3° S of Mars
11th 03h Moon 0.3° N of Praesepe
12th 02h First quarter
12th 16h Moon 3° N of Regulus
18th 22h Full moon
19th 18h Mars 0.2° N of star cluster M35 in Gemini
20th 18h Moon 1.7° N of Jupiter
21st 14h Mercury in superior conjunction
22nd 23h Moon 0.5° S of Saturn
26th 18h Last quarter
Alan Pickup
This is a slightly revised version, with added diary, of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on April 30th 2019, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.
Scotland’s Sky in January, 2019
Rise early for a total lunar eclipse on the 21st

The maps show the sky at 21:00 GMT on the 1st, 20:00 on the 16th and 19:00 on the 31st. An arrow depicts the motion of Mars. (Click on map to enlarge)
Any month that has the glorious constellation of Orion in our southern evening sky is a good one for night sky aficionados. Add one of the best meteor showers of the year, a total eclipse of the Moon, a meeting between the two brightest planets and a brace of space exploration firsts and we should have a month to remember
Orion rises in the east as darkness falls and climbs well into view in the south-east by our star map times. Its two leading stars are the blue-white supergiant Rigel at Orion’s knee and the contrasting red supergiant Betelgeuse at his opposite shoulder – both are much more massive and larger than our Sun and around 100,000 times more luminous.
Below the middle of the three stars of Orion’s Belt hangs his Sword where the famous and fuzzy Orion Nebula may be spied by the naked eye on a good night and is usually easy to see through binoculars. One of the most-studied objects in the entire sky, it lies 1,350 light years away and consists of a glowing region of gas and dust in which new stars and planets are coalescing under gravity.
The Belt slant up towards Taurus with the bright orange giant Aldebaran and the Pleiades cluster as the latter stands 58° high on Edinburgh’s meridian. Carry the line of the Belt downwards to Orion’s main dog, Canis Major, with Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. His other dog, Canis Minor, lies to the east of Orion and is led by Procyon which forms an almost-equilateral triangle with Sirius and Betelgeuse – our so-called Winter Triangle.
The Moon stands about 15° above Procyon when it is eclipsed during the morning hours of the 21st. The event begins at 02:36 when the Moon lies high in our south-western sky, to the left of Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and its left edge starts to enter the lighter outer shadow of the Earth, the penumbra.
Little darkening may be noticeable until a few minutes before it encounters the darker umbra at 03:34. Between 04:41 and 05:46 the Moon is in total eclipse within the northern half of the umbra and may glow with a reddish hue as it is lit by sunlight refracting through the Earth’s atmosphere. The Moon finally leaves the umbra at 06:51 and the penumbra at 07:48, by which time the Moon is only 5° high above our west-north-western horizon in the morning twilight.
This eclipse occurs with the Moon near its perigee or closest point to the Earth so it appears slightly larger in the sky than usual and may be dubbed a supermoon. Because the Moon becomes reddish during totality, there is a recent fad for calling it a Blood Moon, a term which has even less of an astronomical pedigree than supermoon. Combine the two to get the frankly ridiculous description of this as a Super Blood Moon.
Sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh change from 08:44/15:49 on the 1st to 08:10/16:43 on the 31st. New moon early on the 6th, UK time, brings a partial solar eclipse for areas around the northern Pacific. First quarter on the 14th is followed by full moon and the lunar eclipse on the 21st and last quarter on the 27th.
The Quadrantids meteor shower is active until the 12th but is expected to peak sharply at about 03:00 on the 4th. Its meteors, the brighter ones leaving trains in their wake, diverge from a radiant point that lies low in the north during the evening but follows the Plough high into our eastern sky before dawn. With no moonlight to hinder observations this year, as many as 80 or more meteors per hour might be counted under ideal conditions.
Mars continues as our only bright evening planet though it fades from magnitude 0.5 to 0.9 as it recedes. Tracking through Pisces and well up in the south at nightfall, it stands above the Moon on the 12th. Our maps show it sinking in the south-west and it sets in the west before midnight.
Venus, its brilliance dimming only slightly from magnitude -4.5 to -4.3, stands furthest west of the Sun (47°) on the 6th and is low down (and getting lower) in our south-eastern predawn sky. Look for it below and left of the waning Moon on the 1st with the second-brightest planet, Jupiter at magnitude -1.8, 18° below and to Venus’s left. As Venus tracks east-south-eastwards against the stars, it sweeps 2.4° north of Jupiter in an impressive conjunction on the morning of the 22nd while the 31st finds it 8° left of Jupiter with the earthlit Moon directly between them.
Saturn, magnitude 0.6, might be glimpsed at the month’s end when it rises in the south-east 70 minutes before sunrise but Mercury is lost from sight is it heads towards superior conjunction on the Sun’s far side on the 30th.
China hopes that its Chang’e 4 spacecraft will be the first to touch down on the Moon’s far side, possibly on the 3rd. Launched on December 7 and named for the Chinese goddess of the Moon, it needs a relay satellite positioned beyond the Moon to communicate with Earth.
Meantime, NASA’s New Horizons mission is due to fly within 3,500 km of a small object a record 6.5 billion km away when our New Year is barely six hours old. Little is known about its target, dubbed Ultima Thule, other than that it is around 30 km wide and takes almost 300 years to orbit the Sun in the Kuiper Belt of icy worlds in the distant reaches of our Solar System.
Diary for 2019 January
1st 06h New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule
1st 22h Moon 1.3° N of Venus
2nd 06h Saturn in conjunction with Sun
3rd 05h Earth closest to Sun (147,100,000 km)
3rd 08h Moon 3° N of Jupiter
4th 03h Peak of Quadrantids meteor shower
6th 01h New moon and partial solar eclipse
6th 05h Venus furthest W of Sun (47°)
12th 20h Moon 5° S of Mars
14th 07h First quarter
17th 19h Moon 1.6° N of Aldebaran
21st 05h Full moon and total lunar eclipse
21st 16h Moon 0.3° S of Praesepe
22nd 06h Venus 2.4° N of Jupiter
23rd 02h Moon 2.5° N of Regulus
27th 21h Last quarter
30th 03h Mercury in superior conjunction
31st 00h Moon 2.8° N of Jupiter
31st 18h Moon 0.1° N of Venus
Alan Pickup
This is a slightly revised version, with added diary, of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on December 31st 2018, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.
Scotland’s Sky in October, 2018
Draconid meteors glide away from the Dragon’s head

The maps show the sky at 23:00 BST on the 1st, 22:00 BST (21:00 GMT) on the 16th and at 20:00 GMT on the 31st. An arrow depicts the motion of Mars. Summer time ends at 02:00 BST on the 28th when clocks are set back one hour to 01:00 GMT. (Click on map to enlarge)
Mars dominates our southern evening sky but most of the other bright planets are poorly placed this month. Even so, our October nights are full of interest, from the Summer Triangle in the evening to the star-fest around Orion before dawn.
Although Mars dims from magnitude -1.3 to -0.6, its reddish light remains prominent as it moves from low in the south-south-east at nightfall to the south-south-west at our map times and onwards to set in the south-west a little before 01:00 BST (midnight GMT). As its distance grows from 89 million to 118 million km, and its diameter shrinks from 16 to 12 arcseconds, the planet speeds through Capricornus to climb 6° northwards and that much higher in our sky. Catch it to the left of the Moon on the 17th and below-right of the Moon on the 18th.
The Sun tracks 11° southwards as Edinburgh’s sunrise/sunset times change from 07:15/18:48 BST (06:15/17:48 GMT) on the 1st to 07:17/16:35 GMT on the 31st. The Moon is at last quarter on the 2nd, new on the 9th, at first quarter on the 16th, full (the Hunter’s Moon) on the 24th and back at last quarter on the 31st.
Our charts show the Plough in the north as it moves below Polaris, the Pole Star. Mizar, in the Plough’s handle, forms a famous double star with the fainter Alcor – the pair being separated by about one third the diameter of the Moon. Once held as a (not very rigorous) test of eyesight, they were dubbed “The Horse and Rider”.
Both lie 83 light years (ly) from us although we can’t be certain that they are tied together by gravity. In any case, we are not talking about just two stars, for Alcor has a faint companion and most telescopes show Mizar to be a binary star – the first to be discovered telescopically in the 17th century. Spectroscopes reveal that each of Mizar’s components is itself binary, so Mizar and Alcor, if they are truly associated, together form a sextuplet star system.
Mizar is the same brightness, magnitude 2.2, as Eltanin which lies 14° to the right of Vega and very high in the west at nightfall, falling into the north-west overnight. It is the brightest star in Draco and a member of a quadrilateral that marks the head of the Dragon whose body and tail twist to end between the Plough and Polaris. It lies 154 ly away but is approaching the Sun and will pass within 28 ly in another 1.5 million years to become the brightest star in Earth’s night sky.
Meteors from the Draconids shower diverge from a radiant point that lies close to Draco’s head (see our north map) between the 7th and 10th. Don’t expect a major display – perhaps no more than 10 meteors per hour, though all of them are very slow as they glide away from the radiant. The shower’s peak is due in a moonless sky around midnight on the 8th-9th and is worth checking because some years surprise us with strong displays and the shower’s parent comet, Comet Giacobini-Zinner, was visible through binoculars when it swept within 59 million km last month.
A better-known comet, Halley, is responsible for the meteors of the Orionids shower which lasts from the 16th to the 30th and has a broad but not very intense peak of fast meteors between the 21st and 24th. The radiant point, between Orion and Gemini, rises in the east-north-east soon after our map times and passes high in the south before dawn. Sadly, the peak coincides with the full moon, so don’t expect much of a show.
From high in the south at nightfall, the Summer Triangle (Vega, Deneb and Altair) tumbles into our western sky by the map times. By then, the less impressive and rather empty Square of Pegasus is in the south and Taurus and the Pleiades star cluster are climbing in the east. Orion rises below Taurus over the next two hours and crosses the meridian as the night ends.
Neptune and Uranus, now well placed in the evening, may be located through binoculars using better charts than I can provide here. A web search, for example for “Neptune finder chart”, should help. Neptune shines at magnitude 7.8 and lies in Aquarius at a distance of 4,342 million km on the 1st. Uranus is 2,824 million km away in Aries, near its border with Pisces, when it stands opposite the Sun in the sky (opposition) on the 24th. Although the full Moon stands close to it on that day, its magnitude of 5.7 makes it just visible to the unaided eye under a good dark and moonless sky.
October should see the launch of the European Space Agency’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury, but the planet itself is too low in our evening twilight to be seen. Venus sweeps around the Sun’s near side at inferior conjunction on the 26th and remains hidden in the Sun’s glare.
Jupiter is bright (magnitude -1.8) but less than 8° high in the south-west at sunset as the month begins. One of our last chances of spotting it in our bright evening twilight comes on the 11th when it lies 4° below-left of the young earthlit Moon.
Saturn, magnitude 0.5 and edging eastwards in Sagittarius, stands less than 10° high above Edinburgh’s south-south-western horizon as the sky darkens and sets in the south-west some 45 minutes before our map times. Look for it to the left of the Moon on the 14th.
Diary for 2018 October
Times are BST until the 28th
2nd 11h Last Quarter
9th 00h Peak of Draconids meteor shower
9th 05h New moon
11th 22h Moon 4° N of Jupiter
15th 04h Moon 1.8° N of Saturn
16th 19h First quarter
18th 14h Moon 1.9° N of Mars
21st – 24th Peak of Orionids meteor shower
24th 02h Uranus at opposition at distance of 2,824m km
24th 18h Full moon
26th 15h Venus in inferior conjunction on Sun’s near side
28th 02h BST = 01h GMT End of British Summer Time
31st 17h GMT Last quarter
Alan Pickup
This is a slightly revised version, with added diary, of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on September 29th 2018, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.
Scotland’s Sky in April, 2017
Jupiter rules our April nights

The maps show the sky at midnight BST on the 1st, 23:00 on the 16th and 22:00 on 30th. An arrow shows the motion of Mars during the final week of the month. (Click on map to enlarge)
Venus dominated our evening sky for the first quarter of 2017, but it is now Jupiter’s turn in the spotlight. The conspicuous giant planet lies directly opposite the Sun in the sky on the 7th so that it rises in the east at sunset, reaches its highest point in the south in the middle of the night and sets in the west at sunrise.
Our charts show it in Virgo to the east of south as Taurus and Orion dip beneath the western horizon and the Plough looms overhead, stretched out of its familiar shape by our map projection. Regulus in Leo is in the south-west and almost level with Arcturus in Bootes in the south-east. Vega in Lyra and Deneb in Cygnus are beginning their climb in the north-east.
Sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh change from 06:43/19:51 BST on the 1st to 05:31/20:50 on the 30th. The Moon is at first quarter on the 3rd, full on the 11th, at last quarter on the 19th and new on the 26th.
Venus rises only a little more than one hour before sunrise and, though brilliant at magnitude -4.2, may be difficult to spot low in the east before dawn. However, the other inner planet, Mercury, remains nicely placed in the evening and stands furthest east of the Sun (19°) on the 1st.
Thirty minutes after Edinburgh’s sunset on that day, Mercury is 12° high in the west and shines at magnitude 0.0. It should be possible to spy it through binoculars and eventually with the unaided eye as the twilight fades and the planet sinks to set another 96 minutes later. By the 8th, though, it is a couple of degrees lower and a quarter as bright at magnitude 1.6 as it is engulfed by the twilight. Inferior conjunction on the Sun’s near side occurs on the 20th.
Mars, magnitude 1.5 to 1.6 and above and to Mercury’s left at present, tracks east-north-eastwards this month to pass 5° below the Pleiades on the 15th and a similar distance left of the star cluster on the 26th. By then it sets late enough to be plotted near our north-western horizon at the star map times.
Its opposition means that Jupiter is at its brightest and closest, shining more brightly than any star at magnitude -2.5 and a distance of 666 million km. It lies 6° north-west (above-right) of Virgo’s leading star Spica as the month begins and tracks 3.7° westwards during April to pass 10 arcminutes or a third of a Moon’s-width south of the fourth magnitude star Theta Virginis on the 5th.
Jupiter lies close to the full Moon on the night of the 10th-11th when the Jovian disk appears 44 arcseconds wide if viewed telescopically, one fortieth as wide as the Moon.
Jupiter’s clouds are arrayed in bands that lie parallel to its equator, the dark ones called belts and the intervening lighter hued ones called zones. There are numerous whirls and spots, the most famous being the Great Red Spot in the southern hemisphere. The planet spins in under ten hours, so a resolute observer might view the entire span of its clouds in a single April night. The four main moons, visible through decent binoculars and easy through a telescope, lie on each side of the disk and change their configuration from night to night.
The beautiful planet Saturn rises in the south-east less than three hours after our map times and is the brightest object (magnitude 0.4 to 0.3) less than 15° above Edinburgh’s southern horizon before dawn. It is a shame that its low altitude means that we miss the sharpest and most impressive views of it rings which span 39 arcseconds in mid-April, and are tilted at 26° around its 17 arcseconds disk. After appearing stationary on the 6th, Saturn begins to creep westwards against the stars of Sagittarius – look for it below and left of the Moon on the 16th and right of the Moon on the 17th.
It is not often that I advertise the annual Lyrids meteor shower. As one of the year’s lesser displays, it yields only some 18 meteors per hour at best, all of them swift and some leaving glowing trains in their wake as they diverge from a radiant point to the right of Vega. The event lasts from the 18th to the 25th and peaks on the 22nd when moonlight should not interfere unduly this year. The Lyrid meteoroids were released by Comet Thatcher, last seen in 1861.
Bright comets have been rare of late, but fainter ones are observed frequently. One such has the jaunty name of comet 41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák and takes 5.4 years to orbit between the paths of Jupiter and the Earth. It passes within 21 million km of us on the 1st as it nears perihelion, its closest point to the Sun, on the 12th. I glimpsed it through binoculars from a superb dark-sky site at Kielder Forrest, Northumberland, last week when it was a diffuse seventh magnitude smudge close to Merak, the southern star of the Pointers in the Plough.
Although its path is not depicted on our chart, the comet is poised to sweep close to three of the stars identified in Draco, between the Plough and Polaris, the Pole Star. It passes 0.6° north of Thuban on the night of the 2nd-3rd, 1.5° south-west of Eta on the 11th (sadly, in full moonlight) and 0.6° west of Beta on the 18th-19th. During past perihelia, it has been seen to flare by several magnitudes for a few days at a time, so, if we are lucky, it may reach naked-eye visibility.
Alan Pickup