The Ward Beecher Planetarium

Did you miss the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus last night? You didn't! Not really, because the pair will still appear close together tonight. Look to the western sky after sunset. In this view from the Great Salt Lake in Utah on June 9th, see if you can spot Mercury near the horizon as well.

More skywatching tips: science.nasa.gov/skywatching

A fantastic image of star trails over the Gemini north telescope.

🌀 A hypnotically starry night was painted over the skies of Gemini North, one half of the NSF NOIRLab International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.

The circular star trails appear to move across the sky during the night because of the Earth's rotation. This effect is beautifully captured through long-exposure photography, a technique that makes stationary objects appear sharp while moving objects appear blurred. The mesmerizing arcs of light trace the apparent motion of stars across the sky. Stars that are farther from the celestial poles seem to move more over time, resulting in longer star trails compared to those near the celestial poles.

✨ At the center of these arcs is the star Polaris, which appears to stay fixed in one spot because it's located almost directly above Earth's North Pole. Its almost stable position in our night sky makes it an important marker for navigation and astronomical observations. https://brnw.ch/21x3cy7

📸: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T. Matsopoulos

Venus and Jupiter are almost their closest together this evening, 1.8° apart . . . tomorrow they'll be in conjunction.
https://buff.ly/PkPbrGF

The latest episode of our Sky Tour Astronomy podcast is out now! This episode highlights the close pairing of Venus and Jupiter under way in the western sky after sunset. You'll also learn why astronomers are fixated on a star in Corona Borealis.
Sponsored by Celestron
Read more: https://buff.ly/aNdOjkf

https://youtu.be/dZgmfxJ0uwc?si=lelCrTvbfc9Nh9No

Curt and the Cosmos: Osiris-Apex Mission On this month's edition of Curt and the Cosmos, Curt Spivy and Andr...

The two brightest planets in our sky will be less than 2 degrees apart on June 9th at sunset.
Read more: https://buff.ly/mRwrm7P

Venus and Jupiter grab your eyes in the west in late twilight. The Summer Triangle marks the dark in the east. So will the subtler Milky Way once the glary Moon is gone.
Read more: https://buff.ly/naFCIO6

PK 164 +31.1: The Headphone Nebula (APOD: 2026 May 27)
Image Credit & Copyright: Bernard Miller Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260527.html

Explanation: What is a pair of headphones doing in the sky? Today’s image features the Headphone Nebula, also known as PK 164 +31.1 or Jones-Emberson 1. This planetary nebula, the remnant of a dying Sun-like star, faintly occupies an angular region of the Lynx constellation about 1/5th the diameter of the full moon. The red and blue-ish green colors trace hydrogen and oxygen atoms, respectively, that have been excited and ionized by the nebula's central white dwarf. The headphone shape, where two lobes of hydrogen puncture the inner region of oxygen, adds this object to a long list of oddly shaped nebulae. The morphology of such strange nebulae hint at the presence of a stellar or planetary companion, which can stir the material flowing out from the dying star. You can listen to Hubble and JWST sonifications of planetary nebulae through your very own headphones!

https://www.facebook.com/bernard.miller.752/
https://kerockcliffe.com/
https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sci/bio/keighley.e.rockcliffe
https://www.nasa.gov/goddard/
https://csst.umbc.edu/directory/
https://cresst2.umd.edu/

Starship Asterisk* • APOD Discussion Page
https://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=260527

Messier 2 (APOD: 2026 May 23)
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Piotto et al.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260523.html

Explanation: After the Crab Nebula, this giant star cluster is the second entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous list of things that are not comets. M2 is one of the largest globular star clusters now known to roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though Messier originally described it as a nebula without stars, this stunning Hubble image resolves stars across the cluster's central 40 light-years. Its population of stars numbers close to 150,000, concentrated within a total diameter of around 175 light-years. About 55,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Aquarius, this ancient denizen of the Milky Way, also known as NGC 7089, is 13 billion years old. An extended stellar debris stream, a signature of past gravitational tidal disruption, was recently found to be associated with Messier 2.

https://spacetelescope.org
https://www.nasa.gov
https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.4564

Starship Asterisk* • APOD Discussion Page
https://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=260523

A Collision of Galaxy Clusters (APOD: 2026 May 21)
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/C. Watson et al.; Optical: PanSTARRS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk and P. Edmonds Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260521.html

Explanation: This big beautiful spiral shines in X-ray light. It is about 20 times larger than our Galaxy. It belongs to Abell 2029, a galaxy cluster one billion light-years away. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the universe that are supported by gravity. Abell 2029 is formed by thousands of galaxies, surrounded by a huge cloud of hot gas and the equivalent of hundreds of trillions times the mass of the Sun in dark matter. The spiral is made of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium, heated to tens of millions of degrees. It was found in a recent study that used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to show that Abell 2029 had a collision with a smaller cluster four billion years ago. The collision affected the gravitational field and caused the intracluster gas to slosh, like wine moving in a wine glass, shaping the spiral.

https://www.nasa.gov/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/chandra/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae2026
https://panstarrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/
https://www.nasa.gov/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/chandra/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/about/about-smithsonian-astrophysical-observatory
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/people/nancy-ra-wolk
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/people/peter-edmonds
https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sci/bio/cecilia.chirenti
https://www.nasa.gov/
https://www.nasa.gov/goddard/
https://www.astro.umd.edu/people/cecilia-chirenti
https://cresst2.umd.edu/

Starship Asterisk* • APOD Discussion Page
https://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=260521