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Ephemeris: 06/12/2025 – Another look at the star Spica

June 12, 2025

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, June 12th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 32 minutes, setting at 9:29, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:56. The Moon, 1 day past full, will rise at 11:20 this evening.

In the south-southwest at 11 PM is the bright star Spica in Virgo the virgin. Arcturus, high in the south, is much brighter than Spica and has an orange tint to Spica’s bluish hue. In fact, Spica is the 15th brightest and the bluest of the 21 first magnitude stars. That means that it has a really hot surface temperature. Spica is actually two stars in a tight 4-day orbit of each other. They are both reasonably matched in mass and brightness. I found that out once photographing a lunar eclipse near Spica, The star came out very blue. The twin stars of Spica are 250 light years away. I’m glad the stars are young now. They will have a very interesting future as they age and interact in the next few million years.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

A Finder chart for the star Spica using image compare. The first image is the sky without miscellaneous lines that aren’t there anyway, and the second contains lines and added labels. The sky is for 11 PM June 12th 2025 and contains the constellations of the Zodiac near Spica and Virgo from Scorpius to Leo. The planet Mars right now is nearing Regulus, and in four days it will actually pass just north of it. Then on September 12th, Mars will pass just north of Spica itself. Created using my LookingUp app, LibreOffice Draw for the captions and GIMP for putting it all together.
The binary stars that make up Spica in this artist’s depiction
The binary stars that make up Spica in this artist’s depiction. The stars cannot be separated in telescopes, but were detected by their Doppler signatures in the stars’ spectra as they orbit each other in 4 days.

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