June 1: The brightest starlike object near the moon tonight will be Saturn.
June 6: Telescope observers can look at brilliant Venus in the west after sunset to see the planet at its half phase.
June 7–19: Use your binoculars to see brilliant Venus in the same view with the Beehive star cluster. The motion of Venus will be obvious from night to night, and the planet will appear closest to the cluster on the evenings of June 12 & 13. Remember that Venus is about 55 million miles away at this time but the cluster stars are over 500 light years away! Another way to think of that is that light reflecting off Venus arrives here after a 5 minute trip, but light given off by the Beehive’s stars takes over 500 years to get here!
June 15–July 10: This will be a good time to see Mercury low in the eastern sky during early dawn twilight. It will look like a moderately bright starlike object. Use binoculars for a striking view of it near the bright, reddish-orange star Aldebaran. If you look around 5:00 a.m. while the sky is still a bit dark as twilight begins, you may see Mercury moving from night to night against the faint background stars of the Hyades star cluster.
June 20: Venus and Jupiter now look close together in the sky although they are of course hundreds of millions of miles apart in actuality. The moon appears near both of them tonight.
June 21: Earth reaches the June solstice position in its orbit at 11:38 a.m., officially beginning Summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
June 30: Jupiter and Venus will appear in the same low power view in a telescope tonight. As the sky darkens can you see all four of Jupiter’s largest moons?
