Watching the Spring-Summer sky night

Last Friday we watched the Spring -Summer sky night.

We drove 50 miles North of Madrid, to the place where the Asociación Astronómica Cruz del Norte of Alcobendas go to observe. There is some light pollution to the South, but it is not a big problem and it is located quite close to Madrid.

Firstly we observed a 1-2 days Moon, which was  slowly hiding. We made our first photos of it . After that we move to the planet we are able to observe at the moment: Jupiter, Mars and Saturn. Jupiter was  surrounded by its four major moons (Io , Ganymede , Europa and Calisto ), a Lovely Mars  with the shape of an orange ball and a spectacular Saturn and  ring.

We observed the typical spring constellations Leo and Virgo.  Gemini was hiding in the West and Scorpio appearing in the East. We had a tour of the circumpolar constellations ( those which are able to see all the year because they are close to the Polar Star) : Ursa Major , Ursa Minor, The Dragon , Cassiopeia.
From the Ursa Major, following the three stars, we went to Arturo , a big red star , which is located in the constellation of Bootes or the Oxen Shepherd. Close to it was the Corona Borealis and Hercules  constellations.

We also saw some summer constellations that were appearing on  the East, like the Lira with its  big green star Vega and the Northern Cross or The Swan , where the star was located Deneb  at the top of the cross and at Albireo the basses. Albireo is actually a double star, one of the stars is a golden one and the other is turquoise (although there were some discrepancies ) .

We could also observe some celestial objects of the Messier catalog : M81 and M82 galaxies in Ursa Major , M13 , the globular cluster, in Hercules, M52 a planetary nebula in Lyra

It was a great night.

Do not miss the pictures.

Night sky watching may the 30th 2014