Hello and welcome everybody to, "In the
Cosmos," from the De Anza College
Planetarium. My name is Toshi Komatsu and
I'm your host and the director of the
planetarium. This week's highlight is all
about planetary challenges. So, without
any further ado, let's go ahead and take
a look. We're looking at the western sky
here on June 4, 2020. It's 9:00 p.m.
local Daylight Time and, at this point,
brilliant Venus is gone, heading for
early morning skies. But, the fourth is a
great chance to spot the only evening
planet that we have left, Mercury, which
on this date will be as far as it gets
from the Sun. Now, Mercury will be less
than 15 degrees above the horizon and
that's just a little bit more than the
width of a fist held at arm's length. So,
look quickly after sunset someplace in
the west and northwest, here, for Mercury
to be visible, again, quite low to the
horizon. That low in the sky, even Mercury
will probably be twinkling somewhat
despite someone telling you that planets
don't twinkle; when 
things are that low in the sky,
everything twinkles. Now, you may also
spot a couple of stars that are nearby.
There's going to be a star here called
Procyon and another star here called
Capella. The three bodies, Procyon, Mercury
and Capella will make almost a nice
straight line at 9 o'clock on the 4th,
there. Mercury will actually be the
dimmest of all three bodies, but you
should notice that Procyon and Capella
are probably twinkling more than Mercury
does. But you can look for all three of
those in the western skies, again, on the
4th of June at 9 p.m. Now we're looking
at the sky on June 8th at 5:00 in the
morning.
So, less challenging, but again it'll be
early in the morning. Look for the Moon
to join two planets, Jupiter and Saturn,
here, in the pre-dawn skies, here. Looking
on the 8th, the Moon will be to the right
of the planetary pair, but if you look on
the 9th, the next day, the Moon is going
to
move over and you'll find the Moon to
the left of the planetary pair.
Again, Jupiter will be the brighter, and then
Saturn, and then the Moon, there. If you
skip ahead to next week on the 12th, then
you'll find that the Moon will be very
close to another planet, Mars, which by
now has drifted quite a bit to the east
of Jupiter and Saturn. Well that's it for
this edition of "In the Cosmos," hopefully
you liked it and learned a little
something. If you did like it, then please
like the video and subscribe to our
YouTube channel. You can find more about
the planetarium via our website and find
more astronomical goodness on all of our
social media. We're available on Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter, so do check out
the links below. For now, this is the De
Anza College Planetarium wishing you
clear, dark skies and signing off, until
next time.
