Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, May 10th.  The sun rises at 6:19.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 38 minutes, setting at 8:58.   The moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 1:36 tomorrow morning.

The constellation Virgo which contains the bright star Spica and for last and this year the planet Saturn is in a sparse region of the sky as far as stars go.  We are almost directly looking out the side of our Milky Way Galaxy.  That milky band has been banished to the northern horizon.  But while the stars may be few, we are also looking out past a gulf of 50 million light years to a great cluster of galaxies we call the Virgo Cluster.  The galaxies here count into the thousands and overflow Virgo itself into Leo to the west, Coma Berenices to the north and Corvus to the south.  I found that an 8 inch diameter telescope can pick up the brightest, but that may be my eyesight.  Charles Messier spotted them over 200 years ago with a telescope less than three inches in diameter.

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

Addendum

Brighter members of the Virgo Cluster. Created using Stellarium. Open circles are galaxies, circles with crosses are globular star clusters, outlying members of our Milky Way galaxy.

Click on image to enlarge.