Bakersfield Night Sky — June 6, 2026
Over the past couple of months we’ve seen the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, draw closer and closer together in the western sky in the evening after sunset. On June 9, they will be right next to each other. They’ll be slightly more than a thumb width at arm’s length apart from each other among the stars of Gemini. To the right of the pair of planets will be the brightest star of Gemini, Pollux, at about half a fist width at arm’s length from them. On the right side of Gemini, near the middle of Gemini, will be the closest planet to the sun, speedy Mercury. The evening of June 10, Mercury will be at its greatest separation from the sun. At 8:50 p.m., forty-five minutes after sunset, Mercury will be about a fist width above the western horizon.
In the early morning sky of June 12, an hour before sunrise, you’ll see a thin waning crescent moon to the upper right of Mars in the east-northeast. The following morning, an even thinner crescent moon will be right next to the Pleiades, close to the east-northeast horizon. The Pleiades will be to the lower left of the moon. Quite a sight in binoculars!
The lunar phase cycle restarts with the new moon phase on June 14, so a couple of evenings later, we’ll see the waxing crescent moon low in the west after sunset. On June 16 a very thin crescent moon will be in between Mercury and Jupiter and on June 17, a slightly fatter crescent will be just to the left of Venus, easily fitting within the same field of view of your binoculars (see inset of star chart). Using your binoculars during the daylight time of June 17, you’ll be able to see the moon cover up (occult) Venus! In Bakersfield, the occultation begins at about 11:39 a.m. with Venus going behind the dark part of the moon near the bottom (so a bit to the left of the bottom horn of the crescent moon). Venus will reappear on the lit side of the moon nearly in the middle edge of the sunlit crescent at about 12:45 p.m. (see inset of the inset of the star chart). Look for the moon about one-third of the way up in the east during that time. Because the moon is so close to us, different cities will see different occultation times and paths.
Last week, NASA released images from the Psyche spacecraft’s swing by of Mars. Psyche got a gravitational assist, sending it on outward to arrive at its namesake, the metal asteroid Psyche in August 2029. The Psyche team ran the spacecraft through its paces during the flyby as a sort of dress rehearsal for its arrival at the asteroid three years later. Thousands of images were taken along with many measurements with its spectrometers and magnetometers. Judging from what we got during this quick flyby, we’re going to get a lot of excellent data when Psyche reaches the asteroid!
In other solar system news, some doubt has been cast on possible detections of geysers on Jupiter’s moon Europa by the Hubble Space Telescope this past decade and a half. Europa has a deep global ocean of liquid water below its icy surface, making Europa be the most likely place in our solar system for current life to exist beyond Earth, even more likely than Mars (Martian life would have been long ago). These geysers would be similar to what we definitely see on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. The problem seems to be that if you take any possible glow coming from Europa’s rarefied atmosphere into consideration, the noisy signal from purported plumes vanishes. Charged particles in Jupiter's magnetic field hit Europa's icy surface (and possible geyser particles?) to create a very low density, rarefied atmosphere (i.e., like chipping off individual molecules from the ice that are then free to move around as a gas). The super-rarefied atmosphere consists of just an exosphere layer of oxygen molecules.
While there’s now some doubt that Hubble actually saw any plumes off the limb edge of Europa, an entirely independent set of measurements from the late Galileo orbiter spacecraft consistent with a geyser explanation still stands. Galileo orbited Jupiter from December 1995 to September 2003 and flew by all of the large moons as it orbited Jupiter. An analysis in 2018 of data collected by the Galileo orbiter's magnetometer in 1997 shows that a brief, localized bend in the magnetic field as it flew by Europa could be explained by Galileo passing through a geyser plume. The 2018 analysis also shows that Galileo's Plasma Wave Spectrometer's measurements of plasma waves from charged particle in gases around Europa's atmosphere could be explained by Galileo passing through a geyser plume. So, geysers or no geysers? We’ll have to wait for the Europa Clipper to study Europa up close starting in April 2030 when it arrives at Jupiter. There are no plans to have Hubble search some more for geyser plumes since any signal would be at the limit of what Hubble can see from its orbit around Earth. Hubble is still an excellent observatory but even Hubble has its limits!
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Director of the William M Thomas Planetarium at Bakersfield College
Author of the award-winning website www.astronomynotes.com
