Starwatch: The June night sky

June's star celestial event is the transit of Venus across the Sun, the last one until 2117. The spectacle begins at about 23:10 BST on 5 June but is only visible from Britain for one hour or so from sunrise on the 6th. The planet, 58 arcsec in diameter, is visible as a sizeable black dot against the Sun's N hemisphere until it leaves the disc between 05:37 and 05:55 as seen from Britain. I had more details about this here on 14 May but, as I did then, I must warn that serious eye damage is likely if we use binoculars or a telescope to look directly at the Sun.Ophiuchus and Hercules sprawl across our S sky at the map times and the red supergiant Antares in Scorpius glowers low in the S.Mars, moving E from Leo to Virgo and dimming from mag 0.5 to 0.8, stands well to...

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