Tonight's Sky: May

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Sonoma State University.

Musical track The Far River written by John Serrie, from the album And the Stars Go With You, courtesy of New World Music, Ltd. 

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 Text, May, tonight's sky. Constellations. Stylized drawings of a lion, a bull, and a ram. 

North, 10 PM. Looking up into a star-filled night sky. 

A constellation formed by lines connecting stars in the shape of a bear with four legs and a long tail facing down. A drawing of a bear appears over the lines. Text, Ursa Major. Pleasant spring evenings are ideal for tracing the legendary patterns of the night sky. Find the pattern of the Big Dipper, part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The hindquarters and tail of the bear form a shape like a dipping ladle with a long handle. Text, Trace past the curve of the Big Dipper's handle down through the bright orange star, Arcturus, and continue until you come to another bright star, Spica. Rotating around the dipper in the sky. Its handle points at Arcturus, a star that glows brightly. On the other side of Arcturus, A constellation with lines forming a central rectangle and four splaying limbs. At the bottom right of the rectangle, Spica. Text, Spica is actually a pair of massive blue-white stars. Spica anchors the constellation Virgo, which dominates the southern sky in May. A drawing of a woman with long hair and angel wings appears over the constellation. Text, Facing Virgo, we are looking away from the crowded dusty plane of our own galaxy. 

In this direction, we have a less obstructed view of the deeper universe which is brimming with other galaxies. A galaxy glows dimly on the right side of Virgo. Text, Sombrero galaxy. One of these is a lenticular, or lens-shaped, galaxy known as the Sombrero. 

An image of the Sombrero galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope, visible light. A slightly concave, disk-shaped white galaxy, its bright center ringed in darker debris. Text, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope provides a detailed view of the dark lanes of dust ringing the Sombrero Galaxy's bright core. Just above the "Y-shape" in Virgo is a concentration of roughly 2,000 galaxies known as the Virgo Cluster. An area between Virgo's wings. Image of the Virgo cluster, ground-based view, dim galaxies grouped together. Text, One of the largest of these is M87, a giant elliptical galaxy with trillions of stars and a supermassive black hole at its core. 

Image of M87 by the Hubble Space Telescope, visible light. A very bright yellow-white point with a stream of ghostly white coming from it. Text, the black hole is emitting a jet of material, faintly visible in this image from Hubble. The same image in radio light, the black hole and its jet glowing red, a cloud of yellowish green around it on a blue background. Text, An image from a ground-based radio observatory shows that the jet shines very brightly in radio light. The radio image also shows a turbulent cloud, evidence for a second jet firing in the opposite direction. 

Pivoting around in the night sky to a small L-shaped constellation. Text, Next to Virgo lies the constellation Coma Berenices, Bernice's Hair. A drawing of a woman's hair appears over the L-shape. Text, Tangled in Bernice's locks are many other distant galaxies, among them the spiral galaxy M64. 

Image of a dim oval-shaped distant galaxy. Text, Ground-based view. M64 is also known as the Black Eye Galaxy for the dark area in its disk. 

Zoom in on M64. A vast spiral-shaped galaxy with a glowing center and clouds of brownish reddish clouds swirling out. A darker brownish cloud region swirls in. Red, blue, and white stars scatter along the clouds. Text, Hubble shows that the dark region is a large band of dust spinning in the opposite direction of the inner regions, likely as a result of a collision in the galaxy's past. To the left of Bernice's hair, a smaller constellation of two connected stars. A drawing of two running dogs appears over it. Text, Canes Venatici. Back toward the handle of the Big Dipper sits the small pattern of Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs. A small point near the Dipper's handle and the dogs' heads. Text, Within the boundaries of this constellation, just below the end star of the Dipper's handle, telescopes find another faint swirl of light, M51. Zoom in on an image of a spidery spiral galaxy with one bright point and one smaller one to the side. Swirls of bluish-white light are veined with bright red stars. Text, Visible light. Hubble shows M51 as a spectacular face-on spiral, the Whirlpool Galaxy, along with a companion galaxy. X-ray light. The galaxies in glowing blue with bright white stars. Text, An X-ray image of the companion reveals shock waves caused by outbursts from a supermassive black hole. Explore the wonders of the May sky with its familiar patterns, legendary figures, and glittering galaxies. Celestial wonders await you in tonight's sky. 

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute's Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA's Universe of Learning Partners, CalTech IPAC, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Sonoma State University.