Get outside with your telescope on clear May evenings to see celestial treats! With weather warming up and skies clearing up, there's no shortage of celestial delicacies to view with telescopes and binoculars. Here are a few of Orion's top suggestions for May observing:
Planets: Venus and Jupiter
This month's planets feature Venus in the western evening skies all month, and especially as an excellent May 23 and 24 grouping with the waxing crescent Moon and the Twins of Castor and Pollux in Gemini. Mid May gives us Jupiter rising in morning, heralding the fun views of its dancing Galilean moons, shadow transits, Great Red Spot, belts, bands and festoons!
May 7 Occultation
On the morning of May 7 our waning 96.4% illuminated Moon occults magnitude 2.8 star Sigma Scorpii across in western US and Canada. Also note the whiteness of the Moon alongside and accentuating the redness of Scorpius' alpha star Antares.
Four Big Planetary Nebulas
Use a 6" or larger telescope and an Oxygen-III or UltraBlock filter to catch nice views of four relatively large planetary nebulas in May skies. See the "Ghost of Jupiter," NGC 3242 in Hydra; M97, "the Owl Nebula" in the Big Dipper; NGC 4361 in Corvus, and the famous "Ring Nebula," M57 in Lyra just a few degrees from bright star Vega.
Five Glittering Globulars
Five picture-perfect examples of globular star clusters will be visible in May skies. Check out M3 in the constellation Boötes. M13, the "Great Cluster in Hercules" will be visible near the zenith. M5 can be found in Serpens, and M92 in the northern section of Hercules. Be sure to track down M4 (NGC 6121) in Scorpius on May 27th, as it will be in a great position for telescopic study throughout the night, reaching zenith around midnight. Big telescopes will provide the best views, but even a pair of humble 50mm or larger binoculars will show you these dense balls of stars from a dark sky site.
Four Face-On Spirals
Use a large telescope to see the classic pinwheel shapes of galaxies M51 and M101 in the Big Dipper asterism of Ursa Major, and M99 and M100 in the Virgo galaxy cluster. There are also dozens of additional galaxies to explore in the Virgo cluster with a large aperture telescope.
May's Challenge Object
May skies present some of the best opportunities to grab a view of Omega Centauri ? the brightest globular star cluster in the sky! While it's big and bright, even visible as a "fuzzy" star in binoculars, the challenge Omega Centauri presents is its low position in southern skies, which can make it unobservable from higher northern latitudes.
All objects described above can easily be seen with the suggested equipment from a dark sky site, a viewing location some distance away from city lights where light pollution and when bright moonlight does not overpower the stars.
