Watch Hubble Making Passes at the Moon

By Thomas Stauffer, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Jun. 1–The Hubble Space Telescope takes two swipes at the moon Tuesday night.

The first pass has it rising just after 8 p.m. just south of the western horizon. By 8:03 p.m., Hubble will have reached an altitude of 10 degrees — about the width of your outstretched fist — just south of Alphard, the brightest star in the dim, elongated constellation Hydra, the water serpent.

The scope will reach its closet point to the moon at 30 seconds past 8:07 about 45 degrees high in the sky.

From there, it will continue east past Jupiter, then disappear in Earth’s shadow about 10 degrees above the eastern horizon at 8:11:43 p.m.

The next pass commences at 9:42 p.m. a little closer to the western horizon. On this pass, Hubble will swing past Alphard on the north, headed once again for the moon. Hubble will climb 34 degrees of sky before disappearing from view about 10 degrees short of the moon at 9:47:38 p.m.

Hubble’s first pass will have a magnitude of 2.0, nearly identical to Alphard’s brightness at 1.99, but its second pass will be dimmer at a 2.7 magnitxude.

Sky Spy

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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