What’s Up in the Night Sky? May 2015

Fred Barrett | May 06, 2015

The Hubble Space Telescope turned 25 just recently and I’m sure that all of you were reminded of that fact by the news media. What may not have been mentioned are the many significant discoveries that the Hubble has provided. I thought that I might mention a few.

The superb resolution of the Hubble cameras has allowed detailed studies of the complexities of the Solar System and the planets and moons that are part of it.

Close pictures of stellar nurseries have provided new insights into how a star is born and the development of planetary systems around the new star.

Hubble has observed thousands of galaxies and has actually viewed objects within those galaxies. It has imaged the centres of the galaxies and discovered that they contain massive Black Holes. Needless to say it has seen colliding galaxies and the results of how gravitational interaction deforms and alters galactic evolution. Hubble discovered that Quasars are actually galaxies with their central Black Holes having a feeding frenzy on super abundant nearby material resulting in a burst of energy. Gobble down a few stars and you get a huge burp of energy!

Hubble allowed scientists to discover the motions of deep space objects by comparing very accurate pictures taken over several years. A big discovery is that we are going to collide with the Andromeda Galaxy in about 2 billion years! Don’t stop paying the mortgage; we’ll be here for a while yet!

Hubble allowed accurate measurements of the light emitted by type I a supernova in distant galaxies and this told us that the Universe is actually expanding at an accelerating rate. The age of our Universe has been found to be 13.8 billion years by calculating an accurate measurement of the present expansion rate. Its observations gave us evidence of a new type of material called Dark Matter. Scientists have no idea of what it is. It also led to the discovery of Dark Energy which seems to be fueling the accelerated expansion. We don’t know anything about Dark Energy either! All the stars and matter that we can see in the night sky only make up about 5% of everything that makes up the Universe. That means that we know nothing about 95% of the Universe and what is really going on.

I could go on and on but I hope the above highlights stimulate your curiosity, not only about Hubble, but about the wonders of our Universe. Hubble has brought the Universe right into our homes.

The full Moon on May 23rd is called the Full Flower Moon or Corn Planting Moon. If your flowers aren’t up yet, try fertilizer. My Garlic is up; wait, that’s not a flower though some call it the stinky flower!

On the 5th, look for the Moon about 7 degrees east of Saturn.

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks on the night of May 6. It has a modest hourly rate of 40 meteors. With the Moon just being past full, I’m afraid the seeing conditions will be bright.

May 10 is Mother’s Day. Take your mom out under the stars and show her the Universe. Tell her that she means the Universe to you. My mother is gone but I go out and search for her in the sky and remember her dearly.

On the 21st Venus and Jupiter and the crescent Moon are all within 8 degrees of each other.

Look for the Moon 6 degrees to the lower left of Jupiter on May 23.

Venus shines incredibly bright high in the west northwest long after sunset. It will be a spectacular sight through May and June.

Saturn is at opposition on May 22 and will be in view all night. It will be very bright since its rings are highly tipped to reflect the Sun. It can be found in Scorpius in the southeast above the star Antares.

Many of the major summer constellations are coming into view, including the 3 in the Summer Triangle. The Milky Way starts to arc over the centre of the sky and it really can’t get any better than that!

You may contact Fred Garrett through this paper or email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Beginner’s Observer’s Guide by Leo Enright is available at the Sharbot Lake Pharmacy or by contacting the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada www.rasc.ca/publications, subscriptions for our very own excellent Canadian astronomy magazine, Sky News, are also available from RASC..