Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Thursday, June 9th.  Today the sun will be up for 15 hours and 28 minutes, setting at 9:26.   The moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 2:10 tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow the sun will rise at 5:57.

Lets take a look at the moon tonight.  It’ll be a day past first quarter and we see features at the terminator, the sunrise line which gives the moon a slightly gibbous shape.  In small telescopes, at the north or top end of the moon, the wide flat crater Plato has just entered sunlight.  Long shadows from its crater walls will retreat across its flat floor. If you look closely you’ll notice that the floor of Plato is slightly convex to conform with the curvature of the moon itself.  South of Plato is a distinctive triangle of three craters on the flat floor of the Sea of Showers The largest is Archimedes, the northern of the other two is Aristellus, while the other is Autolycus.  They are near the Apollo 15 landing site.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.