Moon names and legends

The full moon of May is known as the planting moon, corn planting moon, and milk moon. Some references also call it the flower moon, although other sources reserve this name for the June full moon.

Joseph Bruchac, in his book “Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back,” says the Huron tribe called it the budding moon while Lillian Budd, in her book “Full Moons: Indian Legends of the Seasons,” says the Salish tribe associated May with the flowering or budding of both the Earth and young girls, accounting for two names of May’s full moon.

Focus on the planets

Mercury will be lost to view for most of the month, but will peek above the east-northeast horizon around May 28. Look for the elusive innermost planet to the lower right of Venus about half an hour before sunrise.

Venus is still the brightest of the planets, rising about an hour before the sun in May. Look for Venus low in the east shortly before sunrise.

Mars continues to grow in both size and brightness as it heads towards its command performance in August. Look for the Red Planet well up on the southeastern horizon at dawn.

Jupiter is high in the west at dusk, where it outshines all its neighbors until well after midnight. A telescope will reveal Jupiter’s belts as well as the Great Red Spot.

Saturn is low in the west-northwest at dusk. It remains in view for about three hours as May opens, but viewing time drops to less than an hour by month’s end. Plan to take a final look at Saturn’s rings, for the planet will be lost to view in June.

Uranus and Neptune are found in the constellation of Capricornus in the southeastern sky at dawn. Mars passes just south of Neptune on May 14 and will confer the same honor on Uranus in June. Charts to locate Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto may be found in the April issue of Sky & Telescope.

Pluto is high in the southeast during the early evening hours, but will require at least an 8-inch telescope and finder’s chart to locate it.

Our celestial neighborhood

The May issue of Astronomy magazine carries an interview with Geoff Marcy, a Berkeley astronomer who began the search for planets around other stars back when the idea was considered fringe science at best.

Today, with more than 100 extrasolar planets known, Marcy’s research has been vindicated and, coincidentally, in the same issue is a report of a new planet situated only 1.86 million miles from its parent star and having a period of rotation, or year, of only 29 hours. By contrast, the Earth is 93 million miles from the sun and has a period of one year. The new planet has the smallest and fastest known orbit. It was discovered by its frequent transits across the face of the parent star. Each time it passes in front of the star, its light dims, and repeated periodic dimmings of the star give the orbital period of the planet, which is thought to be roughly the size of Jupiter.

May events

1 Sunrise, 5:26 a.m.; sunset, 6:40 p.m.; new moon, 8:15 a.m. The moon is also at apogee, or furthest point from the Earth, today. Today is Beltane, or May Day, a cross-quarter day marking the midpoint between the spring equinox and summer solstice.

4 Saturn is to the upper left of the crescent moon at dusk with orange Aldebaran directly below it.

7 Mercury transits, or passes across the face of the sun, a relatively rare event. Mercury will appear to viewers in the northeast as a tiny black dot just north of the solar equator shortly after sunrise. NEVER view the sun without a safe solar filter!

8 Look for Jupiter below the moon tonight.

9 Moon at first quarter, 7:52 a.m.

14 The sun enters Taurus on the ecliptic.

15 The moon is both full and at perigee, or closest point to the Earth, tonight. There will be a total eclipse of the moon starting around 10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time and reaching totality about an hour later when it will resemble, writes Roger Sinnott in Sky & Telescope, “a red hot penny in a star-filled sky.”

21 The sun enters the astrological sign of Gemini but, astronomically, has just entered Taurus.

23 Moon at last quarter, 8:31 p.m.

28 The moon is at apogee for the second time this month. Look to the east-northeast about a half hour before sunrise where the thin crescent moon, Venus, and Mercury form a triangle on the horizon.

31 New moon, 12:20 a.m.; sunrise, 4:53 a.m.; sunset, 8:13 p.m.