May 2024 Skywatching Tips
May 3, 2024
In May 2024, stargazers can look forward to a variety of celestial events and features in the nighttime sky. Here's a breakdown of what to expect, including phases of the moon, visible planets, prominent stars like Antares,a meteor shower, and notable constellations.
On May 3rd, just before dawn, you can see the crescent Moon rising with Saturn. Mars rises about 45 minutes after Saturn. On May 4th, the Moon shows a slimmer crescent and has moved between Saturn and Mars. On May 23rd, the full Moon will appear quite close to the bright red star Antares, in Scorpius, as the pair rise. But for those on the East Coast of the U.S. – south of Delaware and down through the whole state of Florida – you'll actually observe the Moon pass in front of Antares – an event called an occultation. Over a couple of hours as the pair rise into the night sky, the Moon will move slightly in its orbit, first obscuring and then revealing Antares.
May brings one of two annual meteor showers that are attributed to Halley's comet. The eta Aquariid meteors are seen each year in May, whereas the Orionid meteors streak through our skies in October. This situation occurs because Earth crosses through Comet Halley's orbit twice every year, in May and October. Along Halley's path is a meteor stream – lots of little grains of rock and dust cast off by the comet, and these strike our atmosphere and burn up as meteors.
The Aquariid shower peaks overnight on May 5th and into the morning of the 6th. You can see meteors from this shower the whole week centered around the peak night, though. The place on the sky where the meteors appear to originate, the radiant, is in the constellation Aquarius, so you'll have a chance to see meteors as long as the radiant is above the horizon, with more meteors the higher that point rises in the sky. This time of year, Aquarius rises after midnight, so the time to watch this shower is in the few hours before dawn. This is a great shower for observers in the Southern Hemisphere. The radiant rises a good bit higher in the sky before morning twilight, because in May, which is autumn there, nights are longer. Those in optimal dark sky conditions can see 40 meteors per hour. For Northern Hemisphere observers, it's less than half that amount – more like 10 to 20 meteors per hour. Credit: NASA.
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