Our satellite hangs together with the Maiden’s brightest star early this morning.
The Moon and Spica hang close together as they set in the west in the early-morning hours of May 10. Credit: Alison Klesman (via TheSkyX)
The Moon passes 0.4° south of Spica at 4 A.M. EDT. The best time for observing this pairing is in the few hours between midnight and 3 A.M. local daylight time, when they are still comfortably high above the horizon.
At that time, turn west to see the nearly Full Moon (now 95 percent lit) hanging just below Spica. The pair lies in southern Virgo the Maiden, the sky’s second-largest constellation after Hydra. Spica is a magnitude 1 star that helps to mark Virgo in the sky, as this constellation has few other bright suns to draw the eye. Some 250 light-years from Earth, Spica’s brilliance indicates it must be nearly 2,000 times as bright as our Sun for us to see it as a 1st-magnitude star.
Only the Moon’s far western limb remains in darkness as lunar day unfolds across ever more of the nearside. With a telescope, look along the terminator separating light from dark for a small but prominent circular crater in the lunar northwest, with its western interior wall brightly lit by sunlight. This is Aristarchus, which stretches about 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide and hosts a bright apron of ejecta around its rim.
The Moon reaches apogee at 8:47 P.M. EDT, when it sits at the farthest point from Earth in its roughly month-long orbit. At this time, our satellite will be 252,428 miles (406,243 km) away.
Sunrise: 5:50 A.M.
Sunset: 8:04 P.M.
Moonrise: 6:30 P.M.
Moonset: 4:33 A.M.
Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous (96%)
*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40° N 90° W. The Moon’s illumination is given at 12 P.M. local time from the same location.
For a look ahead at more upcoming sky events, check out our full Sky This Week column.
