Skywatcher and Astronomy highlights for Charlotte

Thank you to NASA ambassador Tony Rice for providing the weekly Astronomical highlights for Charlotte.

You can connect with Tony right here

Highlights

• Russian ground controllers have given up on regaining contact with the Progress M-27M. The craft is expected to reenter within the next weeks. Odds are this will happen over water. NORAD is tracking 16 objects related to the launch, far more than usual.
  
• The Moon and Saturn will appear very close to one another the evening of Tue May 5. The Aquarid meteor show also reaches its peak that night.
• This week and next continue to be a good time to see Mercury with the naked eye, about 30 minutes after sunset. Unfortunately, the new crater created by the MESSENGER spacecraft won’t be visible to telescopes for several weeks.

• May 12 Curtiss Cross, an X-shaped illumination effect located between the craters Parry and Gambart

• Mon May 11 06:36:06: last quarter moon

Planet visibility

Sample rise/set times for 05/04/15

Satellite passes

International Space Station (ISS)

• poor pass begins Wed 2015-05-13 05:08:21 from the SSW (196°) reaches 28°, lasts 6 minutes
• outstanding pass begins Fri 2015-05-15 04:56:05 from the SW (219°) reaches 66°, lasts 5 minutes
• fair pass begins Sat 2015-05-16 04:03:33 from the SE (135°) reaches 31°, lasts 3 minutes
• good pass begins Sun 2015-05-17 04:43:25 from the WSW (257°) reaches 54°, lasts 5 minutes

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

no visible HST passes predicted during this period

See Heavens Above for the latest pass predictions. Satellite pass gradings are based on altitude reached and duration of pass. Higher altitude passes are closers to the observer and generally brighter as a result. Satellites other than ISS are much more difficult to spot.

Moon Phases

Sun

Sunrise/set

• gained 0:18:55 (hh:mm:ss) of daylight over this period
• daylight (HH:MM): 14:11
• mean: sunrise 06:14 sunset 20:26
• max: sun angle 68.06°

Twilight

Astronomical Seasons

• autumnal equinox: Wed 2015-09-23 04:20
• summer solstice: Sun 2015-06-21 12:38

Meteor Showers

Meteor Showers Peaking this period

Meteor Showers Underway this period

Next Major Meteor Showers

see: International Meteor Organization calendar for details. ZHR is a rough prediction and represents optimal viewing conditions (clear dark sky, radiant directly overhead). Green rows are the best viewing

Aerospace Calendar

Launches

History

• May 04 Launch of Lunar Orbiter 4, one of five successful pre-Apollo orbital reconnaissance missions. 48 years ago
• May 04 Launch of STS-30 Space Shuttle Atlantis, carrying the Magellan Venus orbiter, which proved to be phenomenally successful. 26 years ago
• May 04 Launch of the Aqua satellite, designed to study details of the Earth’s hydrologic cycle. The spacecraft was formerly known as ‘EOS PM-1.’ 13 years ago
• May 04 Launch of the LAGEOS geodesy satellite. 39 years ago
• May 05 Alan B. Shepard became the first American in Space! 54 years ago
• May 06 Neil Armstrong, who would become the first human to walk on the Moon fourteen months hence, ejected safely from a malfunctioning Lunar Lander Research Vehicle 1 just before it crashed. 47 years ago
• May 07 Launch of STS-49 Space Shuttle Endeavour, which would capture wayward satellite Intelsat 6, attach a booster pack, and send it to its proper orbit. 23 years ago
• May 07 Launch of Telstar 2, a very early communications satellite, but also a probe of the Van Allen radiation belts. 52 years ago
• May 09 Hayabusa (aka Muses-C) launched from Kagoshima Space Center, Japan and became the first spacecraft to lift off from an asteroid and return to Earth with a sample. Propelled by an ion engine, Hayabusa survived a solar flare to land the rubble-pile asteroid Itokawa on 20 November 2005, at about 300 million km from Earth. Though a released MINERVA mini-lander was lost, a scooped sample of the asteroid was returned to Earth on 13 June 2010 in a successfully recovered capsule. 12 years ago
• May 09 Launch of Luna 5. It would crash into the Moon in a failed attempt at a robotic soft landing. 50 years ago
• May 09 Launch of Mariner 8, intended as a companion to Mariner 9, both targeting Mars. Its booster malfunctioned, and Mariner 8 failed to reach orbit. The Mariner 9 mission was altered to allow a single spacecraft to accomplish most of the joint mission objectives. 44 years ago
• May 10 ‘We can rebuild him.’ Experimental aircraft ‘lifting body’ M2-F2 crashed on Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards AFB, severely injuring pilot Bruce Peterson. Footage of the crash was later used in the opening credits of The Six Million Dollar Man. In reality, the aircraft was rebuilt, but the pilot was not; Peterson’s injuries eventually ended his piloting career. 48 years ago
• May 11 Launch of STS-125 Space Shuttle Atlantis on the final repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Onboard are astronauts Scott D. Altman, commander; Gregory C. Johnson, pilot; Andrew J. Feustel, Michael T. Good, John M. Grunsfeld, Michael J. Massimino, and K. Megan McArthur, all mission specialists. 6 years ago
• May 13 Launch of Apollo A-001, a flying test of the capsule escape rocket system, aboard a “Little Joe II” booster, at White Sands. 51 years ago
• May 13 The first and to date only three-person extra-vehicular activity (EVA) was performed during Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-49. Astronauts successfully hand captured a stranded INTELSAT VI satellite, attached a new perigee kick motor while in the payload bay, and then re-deployed the spacecraft for operational use. 23 years ago

Covers Mon 2015-05-04 01:00 through Thu 2015-05-14 01:00 . Calculations are for Charlotte, NC (40.3690,-80.6330) at an elevation of 215 m and are expressed in local (US/Eastern) time and a 24 hour clock.