Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Well, not really.*

This is Ephemeris for Tuesday, June 9th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 29 minutes, setting at 9:27, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:57. The Moon, 1 day past last quarter, will rise at 2:38 tomorrow morning.

In the last month or so as Jupiter and Venus ended up in the same part of the sky we’ve been seeing that Venus has been approaching Jupiter well today they cross paths with Jupiter just below Venus tonight. Jupiter, which is brighter than any nighttime star, looks rather dim compared to Venus when they’re close together. It is about 1/6 of the brightness of Venus. Venus is much brighter than the larger Jupiter because it is much closer to us and closer to the sun which is illuminating it. Jupiter is five times the earth’s distance from the sun. The sunlight it receives is diluted to only 4% that the earth gets, which is further diminished by the reflected light travelling back to us by about the same distance.

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.

* See the second image in the addendum.

Addendum

Starting with tomorrow’s posting I will be including a diagram something like this of the naked-eye planets and their positions relative to the Earth.