The Night Sky in May 2026
Venus and Jupiter are the ‘evening stars’. Both appear in the northwest soon after sunset. Silver Venus is low in the sky; golden Jupiter is higher. Venus sets around 6:50 pm at the beginning of May and around 7:20 at the end (so isn’t on the chart). Jupiter sets around 9:50 at the beginning of the month and soon after 8 pm at the end. By the end of the month the two planets will be getting close together. (They will be just 1.6°, three full-moon widths, apart on June 10.) The Moon will be near Venus on the 19th and near Jupiter on the 20th.
As the sky darkens Sirius appears midway down the western sky. It is the brightest true star and twinkles with all colours when setting in the southwest in the late evening. It is the ‘Dog Star', marking the head of Canis Major the big dog, now head down, tail up. Canopus, the second brightest star, is southwest of overhead. Below Sirius are bluish Rigel and reddish Betelgeuse, the brightest stars in Orion. Between them is a line of three stars, Orion's belt. To southern hemisphere star watchers, the line of three makes the bottom of 'The Pot', now tipped on its side.
Orange Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern sky, rising in the northeast at dusk. It often twinkles red and green when low in the sky. It is 37 light-years* away and about 120 times brighter than the sun.
Crux, the Southern Cross, is southeast of the zenith, to the right of 'The Pointers'. Alpha Centauri, the brighter Pointer, is the closest naked-eye star, 4.3 light years away. Beta Centauri, like most of the stars in Crux, is a blue-giant star hundreds of light years away. Canopus is also very luminous and distant: 13 000 times brighter than the sun and 300 light-years away.
Following the Milky Way down into the southeast finds Scorpius. Orange Antares marks the Scorpion's body. The scorpion's upside-down tail curves to the right of Antares. There is a Greek legend that the Scorpion and Orion were always fighting so a goddess put them on opposite sides of the sky, so they never appeared in the sky together. It doesn’t work for the southern hemisphere.The Moon hides (occults) Antares on May 31st. It moves in front of the star around 7:30 or later, depending on your location. Antares reappears around 8:40.
The Milky Way is brightest in the southeast toward Scorpius and Sagittarius. In a dark sky it can be traced up past the Pointers and Crux, fading toward Sirius. The Milky Way is our edgewise view of the galaxy, the pancake of billions of stars of which the sun is just one. The thick hub of the galaxy, 27 000 light-years away, is in Sagittarius. The nearby outer edge is by Orion where the Milky Way is faintest. A scan along the Milky Way with binoculars shows many clusters of stars and some glowing gas clouds, particularly in Carina and Scorpius.
The Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC, are midway down the southern sky, easily seen by eye on a dark moonless night. They are small galaxies. The Large Magellanic Cloud is 160 000 light-years away and the Small Cloud is around 200 000 light-years away. They are much smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy but there are many billions of stars in each.
Some meteors might be seen in the pre-dawn sky around May 6-7 as the Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks. Up to 30 meteors per hour can be seen in a dark sky but at this year’s peak there is a bright Moon hiding the fainter meteors. The shower runs from late April to late May. The meteors are dust from Halley’s comet, hitting the air at high speed and burning up.
At the beginning of the month three medium-bright planets make a vertical line low in the eastern dawn sky. Saturn, cream coloured, is highest. Below Saturn, and a bit fainter, is reddish Mars. Mercury is at the bottom of the line, rising 70 minutes before the Sun. Mercury soon sinks into the twilight as it moves to the other side of the Sun. Saturn moves higher, rising around 2:30 a.m. at the end of May. Mars stays put, rising around 5 a.m. through the month.
*A light-year (l.y.)is the distance that light travels in one year: nearly 10 million million km. Sunlight takes eight minutes to get here; moonlight about one second. Sunlight reaches Neptune, the outermost major planet, in four hours. It takes sunlight four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
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