Milky Way will be visible over Memorial Day weekend: What to know
The Milky Way is expected to stand out in the sky in the coming days.
The billions of stars comprising our home galaxy should appear especially vibrant in late-May as the band arcs across the night sky. The reason has much to do with the cycle of the moon, but it also has to do with how high in the sky the Milky Way should appear from our perspective here on Earth, specifically in the United States.
Here's everything to know about our Milky Way, including how to see the stunning celestial phenomenon.
The Milky Way is our home galaxy with a disc of stars that spans more than 100,000 light-years. Because it appears as a rotating disc curving out from a dense central region, the Milky Way is known as a spiral galaxy.
Earth is located along one of the galaxy's spiral arms, roughly halfway from the center, according to NASA.
The Milky Way sits in a cosmic neighborhood called the Local Group that includes more than 50 other galaxies. Those galaxies can be as small as a dwarf galaxy with up to only a few billion stars, or as large as Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbor.
The Milky Way was named thanks to our perspective on Earth, as it appears as a faint band of light stretching across the entire sky.
While the Milky Way is nearly always visible from Earth, certain times of year are better for stargazers to catch a glimpse of the band of billions of stars that together create our galaxy.
"Milky Way season," when the galaxy's bright center becomes easier to see from Earth, typically runs from February to October, according to Milky Way photography website Capture the Atlas. However, the best time to view the Milky Way in the Northern Hemisphere is between March and September.
For several days in May, the Milky Way may be even more visible than usual.
The peak days to view the Milky Way will be from Tuesday, May 20, to Friday, May 30, according to science news website LiveScience. That's the period between the last quarter moon and the new moon, when skies should be darker.
Anyone in the northern hemisphere, could have spectacular views of the Milky Way on clear nights with a new moon. The best time to look is when the sky is darkest - which is between midnight and 5 a.m., according to Capture the Atlas.
Stargazers can observe the Milky Way galaxy by looking for the Summer Triangle, "a shape formed by three bright stars" that spans across the Milky Way, according to LiveScience.com.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the Milky Way rises in the southeast, travels across the southern sky and sets in the southwest, according to Weather.com.
Spectators will have the best luck on cloud-free nights and in locations away from city light pollution. DarkSky International maintains a website that lists all designated dark sky communities around the world, including 159 locations in the U.S.
Though still several days away, the Memorial Day weekend is predicted to be soggy and cloudy on Saturday night and cloudy on Sunday and Monday nights in western New York, according to the National Weather Service in Buffalo.
Mostly cloudy skies are also predicted Tuesday and Wednesday nights, which could make for some difficult skygazing. A longer term forecast was not immediately available.
Timing your viewing experience with a new moon phase will also help your viewing chances because the light reflected off the moon will not drown out the billions of stars within the Milky Way, astronomers say.
Just like Earth, half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun, while the other half remains dark. A new moon represents the start of a new lunar cycle, when the illuminated side of Earth's natural satellite is facing away from our planet, rendering it effectively invisible to us.
As the moon orbits around Earth and Earth orbits around the sun, the amount of sunlight that reflects off the moon and travels to our eyes changes every day until the moon appears as full.
The next new moon is Tuesday, May 26, which is the day after Memorial Day.
Contributing: USA Today Network
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Milky Way will be visible over Memorial Day weekend: What to know
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