The Milky Way rises high in the south this month, with Sagittarius and Scorpius sitting in the east – a clue that winter is on its way in the southern hemisphere. Sitting high in the southern sky during May is the prominent constellation Crux, the Southern Cross. If you have a small telescope, be sure to point it at Crux’s brightest star Acrux, which is actually a double star made of two blue-white stars. 

The large constellation Centaurus, the Centaur, sits within the stunning star fields of the Milky Way and is home to arguably the finest globular cluster in the whole night sky: the magnificent Omega Centauri, or NGC 5139. Looking south to Carina, there are several fine open clusters on view. NGC 3532, the Pincushion Cluster, can be seen with the naked eye, but binoculars reveal its many twinkling stars well. The magnitude 4.2 cluster NGC 3114 is an interesting target for a small telescope, while NGC 2516, the Southern Beehive, contains approximately 100 stars and can be viewed with just a pair of binoculars. 

The annual Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which is caused by the dust left over from Halley’s Comet entering our atmosphere and vaporising, peaks around May 6-7. If you are very lucky you can expect to see roughly 30 to 50 meteors an hour, and the further south you are, the better view of the shower you will get. The meteors appear to be coming from a point near the star Eta Aquarii in Aquarius, and tend to be quite fast-moving. 

This month’s conjunctions, which is when two astronomical objects appear close to each other in the sky, include the moon and Jupiter on May 1; the moon and Mars, and also Venus and Neptune, on May 4; the moon and Saturn on May 23; the moon and Venus on May 24; and the moon and Jupiter again on May 28.

By Nerida Langcake
This article appeared in the May 2025 issue of the Mornington Peninsula Magazine.