On tap for June: UFO report, Jupiter and the summer solstice | The Sky Guy

Are aliens visiting Earth?

According to some US fighter pilots and former government officials, they may be. In a recent “60 Minutes” segment, the former director of the defense department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program said that “unidentified aerial phenomena” in US airspace is of serious concern.

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The director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense are expected to present an unclassified report to Congress on this subject around June 1.

Here are some problems I see with the ability of aliens to travel the vast distances in space. It takes light traveling at 186,000 miles per second 4.5 years to reach the closest star to our solar system.

Currently it would take thousands of years to travel to the same star at speeds humans have attained.

So, Sky Guy, the aliens are so advanced that they can travel faster than light. The problem here is according to relativity, as an object approaches the speed of light it gains infinite mass. The more mass you gain the more energy required to push a vehicle through space.

How do you engineer materials capable of not being torn apart by stresses? What if you hit a small rock traveling near the speed of light? Not pretty.

Morning sky: Jupiter and Saturn continue to rule the morning sky. In early June Saturn rises around 1 a.m. followed by Jupiter, the brighter of the two, around 2 a.m. By the end of the month Saturn will rise around 11 p.m. and Jupiter at midnight. Mercury joins the two gas giants low in the east by the end of June.

Evening sky: Venus dominates the western sky though it will be low at the beginning of the month but very quickly catches up to Mars by the end of June. Venus is very bright.

Due to the coronavirus there will be no public viewings scheduled this month. If things change, we’ll post it on TAS’s events calendar.

1st: Moon below Jupiter with Saturn to their right in the morning sky.

2nd: Last quarter Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn form a line.

10th: New Moon.

13th: Moon above Mars near the Beehive Cluster in the evening sky after sunset in the west.

15th: Moon near bright star Regulus in Leo the Lion.

18th: First quarter Moon.

19th – 20th: Moon near bright star Spica in Virgo the Virgin in the evening and into the morning sky.

20th: The summer solstice – summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere.

21st: Venus forms a line with the bright stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini the Twins just after sunset in the west.

22nd – 23rd: Moon near bright star Antares (“Rival of Mars”) in Scorpius the scorpion in the evening and into morning sky.

23rd: Mars passes in front of the Beehive Cluster. Great view through binoculars just after sunset in the west.

24th: Full Moon.

27th: Moon below Saturn with Jupiter to their left in the morning sky.

28th: Moon between Jupiter (to the left) and Saturn (to the right).

29th: Moon below and left of Jupiter.

30th: Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn form a line.

Check out TAS’s events calendar at www.stargazers.org.

Ken Kopczynski is president of the Tallahassee Astronomical Society, a local group of amateur astronomers.

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