Exploring the June 2026 Night Skies: Planetary Massings, Occultations, and Dark Constellations

Your Essential Guide to June Naked-Eye Astronomy, Astrophotography Challenges, and tracking the Cosmic Emu

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In this packed episode of Astrophiz, Dr. Ian Musgrave returns to guide us through a spectacular month of celestial events for June 2026. We kick things off with the dramatic “Planet Dance” in the evening sky as Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury draw stunningly close together, forming beautiful planetary massings and triangles alongside a thin crescent moon near Castor and Pollux. In the morning skies, red Mars climbs below Saturn, heading on a trajectory toward Uranus and the Pleiades cluster.

Dr. Musgrave also breaks down key lunar phases—including viewing windows for the Lunar X and Lunar V on June 22nd—and outlines how to spot the early morning occultation of the bright star Antares on June 28th across eastern Australia. For this month’s Tangent and Astrophotography Challenge, we bust a popular social media myth about comet orbits and explain exactly how you can capture the real, measurable motion of planets and the moon against background stars over a single evening. Finally, wrap up your autumn stargazing by locating the striking silhouette of the First Nations dark constellation, the Cosmic Emu, resting neatly on the horizon at astronomical twilight.

Episode Transcript

Host: Brendan O’Brien Guest: Dr. Ian Musgrave

Brendan: Welcome to Astrophiz with Brendan O’Brien. Produced on Yorta Yorta, Pangarang and Kaurna country, we celebrate the first astronomers of this land. Monthly, we explore the universe with the world’s leading scientists. For transcripts and more, visit Astrophiz.com.

And here is Dr. Ian Musgrave with your June SkyGuide.

Brendan: Hello, Ian.

Ian: Hello, Brendan.

Brendan: Great to be speaking with you again, Ian. This is fantastic. Can you tell us, mate, what’s up in the sky for the month of June for your June sky guide?

Ian: Lots of things. Now, the planetary actions split between the morning skies and the evening skies, but the evening skies have a special planet dance early in the month.

Now, if you’ve been watching Venus and Jupiter… If you’ve been lucky enough to have clear skies, you’ve been watching Venus slowly getting higher above the horizon, heading towards Jupiter, which is getting lower and lower in the skies and is now pretty much not worthwhile in telescopes. In the early part of this month, the two come closer. I’ll talk about them in detail shortly. And then Mercury returns to the sky in early June and also comes close to Jupiter.

In the morning, we’ve got Saturn and Mars brightening our skies.

The Moon

And then in terms of the moon, I’ll start talking about the moon. Now, on the moon, the moon’s at apogee on June the 1st. Now, the full moon is May the 31st, but the apogee moon is just past full, and it will make you miss the full moon on the 31st. It’s close enough to fall so that if you take some images of the apogee moon, it’ll be great for comparing to the perigee moons, the so-called supermoons, in November and December. So keep an eye out for that.

Then June the 8th is last quarter, which is ideal for stargazing in the evening. Not so good in the morning, but in the evening the sky will be nice and clear.

Then June 15th, there’s a new moon, which is ideal for stargazing at any time of the night.

On June the 22nd, we have the first quarter moon and we’ve got the lunar X visible. I wonder how people have been going with their imaging of lunar X. I’ve actually been quite successful, but I haven’t posted any pictures recently because life’s been a bit busy.

June the 28th, this is not strictly the moon, but we’ve got an occultation of Antares, and I’ll talk about that detail later.

And then June the 30th, we’ve got the full moon.

Now, I’ve already said we’ve got the moon at Apogee on June the 1st. Perigee is on June the 15th, which is a new moon, so you’re not going to see very much. A perigee in your moon will give you higher tides, or higher tides than normal, but you’re not going to see anything because it’s new. The moon is at Apogee again on June the 28th. So we have a blue apogee, but no one ever calls it that.

Lunar X and Lunar V

So I’ll now talk about the Lunar X. As I said, on June the 22nd, the first quarter, we’ll be able to see the Lunar X and Lunar V. These are typically visible for about four hours from the starting time.

So in universal time, it’s 9.41. AEST, it’s 20.41. ACST 20.11 and AWST in 17.41. So it’s a bit visible at twilight, but it’s still around when the sky is fully dark and you’ll be able to see it fairly well. For those of us in the central and eastern states, the moon’s going to be quite high, so you’ll be able to get a very good view of it.

Brendan: Nice.

Ian: It’ll be very nice. And then the Earth is at solstice on June the 21st. This is when the days start getting longer again.

Evening Sky

So let’s turn to the evening sky, where all the action’s happening at the moment. Well, not all the action, but most of the action.

Mercury returns to the western evening sky this month, and for about the second, it’s going to be seen low above the horizon at nautical twilight, 60 minutes after sunset. It rises rapidly and is very close to the star Epsilon Geminorum on the 8th. If you’ve got a level of horizon, you can see it and the pair of Jupiter and Venus close together. From mid to late June, Mercury is within five degrees—that’s about a hand span—of Jupiter. And it’s closest to four degrees on the 25th. On the 17th, Mercury, Jupiter and a thin crescent moon form a triangle. On the 24th, Mercury is its greatest elongation from the Sun and forms a triangle with Jupiter and Pollux. After this, the pair of Mercury and Jupiter sink towards the horizon and the twilight.

Now Venus is climbing higher in the evening sky and with the moon out of the way a bit later on around about last quarter if you’ve got the ocean or a river or a lake you’ll be able to see the path of Venus glimmering in the water. So on the first Venus is about eight degrees—that’s a bit over one and a half hand spans—from Jupiter. So looking quite good.

And then on the 4th, Venus is about 5 degrees, a hand span from Jupiter, and 6 degrees from the bright star Pollux. And this makes a nice, attractive triangle.

Brendan: Nice.

Ian: Then, not to be outdone, on the 8th and 9th, Venus is less than 2 degrees from Jupiter. And it forms a line with Pollux and a crooked line with Castor. Now, at this time, the pair are visible together in low-power binoculars and wide-field telescope objectives. If you’ve got a nice stable place to put your binoculars, you might be able to see the moons of Jupiter.

Now, Venus then leaves Jupiter behind, and on the 15th, Venus is midway between Jupiter and the Beehive Cluster. That’s M44. And again, now Venus is visible. When the sky is fully dark, you should be able to get a good look at the Beehive cluster. On the 18th, the cluster is about two degrees above Venus and with the four-day-old waxing crescent moon, four degrees above M44. Then on the 20th, Venus and the Beehive are at its closest at two degrees apart. Again, that’ll look really nice in binoculars.

Let’s go back to Jupiter. Again, it’s sinking towards the horizon, and this is probably the last month we’ll have a good look at it. It’s setting around about 10pm. At the moment, it’s low in the northwestern horizon, forming a crooked line with the stars Castor and Pollux and with Venus below it. As I said, on the 4th, Venus is about 5 degrees from Jupiter and 6 degrees from Pollux. And then on the 8th and the 9th, Venus is less than 2 degrees from Jupiter and will be a very nice sight.

Brendan: Is that officially called a conjunction, Ian?

Ian: It’s officially called a ‘Massing“. There is a conjunction. Conjunction is when they fall on the same lines of declination. So I can’t remember exactly when that is, but you’ve certainly got a planetary massing because you’ve also got Mercury in the mix as well.

So on the 17th, Jupiter’s close to the crescent moon and it’s two degrees apart from Jupiter. And now this is a massing. So you’ve got Jupiter, the moon, and Castor and Pollux forming a rough line. Then Mercury and the moon form a triangle. So Mercury, Jupiter and the moon forming a triangle. Then Venus is above and you’ve got Venus and the moon forming another triangle. So this will look really, really nice in the evening sky.

Brendan: Excellent.

Ian: It will be, and I’m hoping I’m not jinxing it so that we don’t get cloud and rain and all that stuff in the way.

Brendan: Yep.

Morning Sky

Ian: But let’s move to the morning sky now. Red Mars is above the eastern horizon at nautical twilight. It’s not really climbing at the moment. But it is moving against the background stars with some interesting patch-ups later on. But now it’s well below Saturn as Saturn climbs higher. And this increases as Mars, as the month progresses.

On the morning of the 30th, Mars will be six degrees from the crescent moon. It will look rather nice. And as the month progresses, Mars heads towards the Pleiades and the Hyades. And on the 30th, Mars is about four degrees from the Pleiades cluster and also about four degrees from Uranus. Mars and Pleiades will fit into a binocular field, as will Mars and Uranus, although in different binocular fields; you can’t get all three of them into the same binocular field unless you’ve got very wide binoculars.

Now, just a heads up, Mars and Uranus will be stunningly close on July the 4th, so that’s an anticipation. If you’ve got a telescope, then you should be able to see a bright red Mars and the disk of Uranus together in moderately powered eyepieces.

Saturn is climbing higher in the morning skies. It’s now high enough for telescope observation. It’s rising about 2.30 a.m. or 2 a.m. if you’re in the eastern states at the beginning of the month. Now, most of last year, this year, the Saturn rings were edge on, so they’re almost invisible. But now rings are opening up, and we’ll be able to see more Saturn-like, and it will look very nice.

Brendan: Yep.

Ian: Now, on June the 10th, the waning crescent moon is 8 degrees from Saturn. So not very close, but not far away and quite nice.

You may not be surprised to know T Coronae Borealis hasn’t gone bang.

Now, there’s an occultation of Antares on Sunday, June the 28th. When the moon is nearly full, it’s got a thin rim of dark edge, so you should be able to see Antares disappear nicely, reappearance maybe a bit harder. Now, this is an early morning occultation, so you have to be up around about 2 o’clock or so, and it’s best seen from the east coast to south of the Gold Coast. Gold Coast sees a graze. Everywhere else in Australia sees a close approach. So the moon is two days off full and it’s going to be quite high in the sky for easy binocular telescope observation. Telescope is best.

So Canberra sees it disappear a bit after two o’clock. Hobart sees it disappear a bit before two o’clock. Melbourne sees it disappear a little bit after two o’clock in the morning. And Sydney sees it disappear at nearly 2.30, and then they reappear around about 3.00. So a nice occultation, unlike the occultation in May, which is deep in the twilight.

As well, you’d probably be noticing that now that Orion the Hunter is almost setting in the west, and in the east Orion’s rival, Scorpius the Scorpion, is rising.

Now, this is a really good month for seeing the cosmic emu. If you’ve got a nice dark sky sight, it’s really quite stunning. The Coalsack near the Southern Cross forming its head, the dark rifts of the Milky Way forming its neck, and then the stars of Scorpius is the fringe of feathers around the body of the emu. So you’ll be able to see the emu later on, but right now, just as astronomical twilight occurs, the emu will be sitting neatly on the horizon for you to enjoy.

Brendan: Yeah, the emu, it’s a great sight. You know, these dark constellations are amazing, but once you see the emu, you can never unsee it.

Ian: Yes.

The June Tangent & Astrophotography Challenge

Brendan: And… Do you have a tangent for us for June, Ian?

Ian: I do indeed have a tangent and possibly a photography challenge, all in the same. So I’m going to talk about comets again.

Brendan: Yep.

Ian: So in the last podcast, we talked about sun-grazing comets and a little bit of history. But there’s a video going around on that wretched hive of scum and villainy called Twitter, labelled “comets are not what we’ve been told”. It shows some very nice time lapses of bright comets with the caption, “watch how it moves in lockstep with the stars.” And that’s it. That’s the argument. And the argument is comets are moving in lockstep with the stars. I’m not sure what the point is, but the problem is they don’t.

Every night you can see them against different stars as they follow their orbit. Now, of course, this is more obvious if you’ve got a bright comet. Comet C/2025 R3 was not particularly bright, but it was nicely visible in binoculars. But the highlight for me was when it was drifting past the sword of Orion’s belt. And each night you could see it getting closer to Orion’s nebula and then moving away. So very, very clear.

Now, in a single night, when viewed from afar, most comets will not seem to move against the background stars. People seem to think they will zip across the sky like a meteor. No, they don’t. They’re actually moving reasonably fast. I’ll talk about that shortly. But you’ve got a very short window of time before they set. So you don’t have long to see them move if you’re just looking with your eyes. But through a telescope or a telephoto lens, you can see them move quite a bit.

So back in 2024, with C/2024 G3, and just recently for C/2025 R3, I had a roughly 20-minute window for imaging. So you’re not going to see much motion in 20 minutes. But for C/2025 R3, I compare my images with those taken by other astrophotographers in the southern hemisphere and see, for example, images taken a few hours previous in New Zealand. So I could compare them and see that the comet had moved against the background stars in just a few hours. I mean, this was particularly cool because these other people had darker skies and better cameras, so you could actually see the tail of the comet properly set against the background of Orion’s nebula, and that was pretty amazing.

But again, I mentioned that many people think bright comets with luminous tails look swooshing and therefore they must be moving conceptually quite fast, however they do move and they’re moving about one degree every 24 hours at the time it was crossing Orion’s belt earlier. It was moving faster later, it’s moving slower because of the way we perceive its orbit.

Now one degree every 24 hours is slow compared to the moon, which moves about 13.2 degrees every 24 hours, yes, but it’s not that far from Venus, which moves an average of about 1.2 degrees per day, and fleet Mercury moves on average about 1.4 degrees per day. To put this into context, 0.5 degrees is roughly the diameter of the moon, which moves about one moon diameter per hour. Mars in contrast moves about 0.5 degrees per day, and Jupiter, Saturn and the rest much less.

Of course, for the outer planets, this is complicated by retrograde motion when the Earth overtakes the planets in their orbits. This is why Mars, Jupiter and Saturn seem to stay in roughly the same place at certain times, and why even after retrograde motion, Jupiter and Saturn seem to stay in the same place night after night. But if you’ve been watching Jupiter over the past few weeks, you’ve been seeing it slowly edge closer to the bright star Pollux.

Brendan: Yep.

Ian: Now, despite that, we tend not to notice the relatively rapid movement of the moon during the night and not many people are looking out at the sky for hours on end. And typically when the moon’s close to faint stars, you don’t even pay that attention. It’s only when the moon is very close to a bright star, a very bright star, do we sometimes take notice.

So for example, on the 19th, the waxing crescent moon is close to the bright star Regulus in the sickle of Leo. And so from nautical twilight to moonset, you can watch the crescent moon come closer to Regulus. And the faintest star, Nu Leonis, it’ll come almost close enough to occult it before it goes behind the horizon. And this occurs over the course of three hours, because of course Regulus is setting. Then on the 24th, you can follow the waxing moon as it comes closer to the bright star Spica. And then, of course, on the 28th, in the early morning, you can watch the moon occult or graze Mars so you can see substantial movement.

So if you want to try some moon photography, you can set up your camera. You have to mess around a bit with the exposure settings if you don’t want to overexpose the moon and underexpose Regulus, but the combination of Moon, Regulus, and the sickle of Leo… if you, say, take an image every 15 minutes over the course of two hours, because unless you’re like me and you’ve got the ocean right next to you, a full three hours is pushing your luck before it goes below the horizon. But that’s something cool. With Spica, because you’ve got the Moon much brighter, seeing Spica may be a little bit harder.

Now, that’s all very well and good, but what about planets? Now, of course, we can see Mercury and Venus moving very quickly day to day, and we’ve talked about Mercury and Venus doing their planet dance with Jupiter. Again, what about in the course of one night? Now, like the comets, Mercury and Venus have a narrow window before they set to see them move. But remember I talked about Venus and the Beehive Cluster? On the 19th and 20th, you have about a two-hour window to see Venus move against the background stars of the Beehive Cluster. Again, you’d need a fairly flat level horizon. If you’ve got mountains, you’re not going to have much of a chance.

So over the course of two hours, and if you take an image every 15 minutes, if you zoom in, you can see Venus moving against the background stars of the Beehive cluster and this could be really interesting. So if you want to try that, even if you’re not trying to catch their movement during one single night session, if you capture it say when Venus is coming close to the Beehive every day and you can see substantial movement, that’s really cool.

And remember the planet dance where we’re seeing Venus catch up to Jupiter, pass Jupiter, lining up with Castor and Pollux. From about the 8th, we’ve got Mercury lined up with Delta Geminorum. You’ve got Venus lined up with Jupiter and Castor. If you take an image every night at roughly the same time, you can make a nice little animation as well as just looking at it. It’s going to look really beautiful. If you don’t have a camera or your camera is not up to this, go and see it yourself. It’s going to be really nice. Now, Planet Dance, really good to look at.

Brendan: Fantastic, Ian. What a great way to start off the month to watch planets dancing together and the 8th and the 9th sound fantastic. I’m really looking forward to it. Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Ian Astroblog Musgrave. And I’m also so looking forward to catching up with you for the July Sky Guide because that episode will mark 10 years of Dr. Ian Musgrave’s Sky Guides on Astrophiz. It’s a decade of fantastic amateur astronomy and observation and challenges and tangents. Let’s all look forward to the start of this month to start with and then the rest of it. And I’ll talk to you very soon on your anniversary sky guide. Thank you, Ian.

Ian: It’s a pleasure to be presenting the sky guide and I’m very excited for the 10th anniversary and there’s some cool things happening in July. But I’ll see—I’m sure I can find a very interesting tangent for the July tangent and maybe again like this month find an interesting astrophotography challenge that people with even simple cameras can do.

Brendan: Beautiful. Thanks mate. Good night.

Ian: Thank you, mate. Good night, too.

Brendan: Make sure you join us for our next guest episode on the 15th of June. And this is a very special episode, which marks the 10th anniversary of Astrophiz. Our first episode was on the 9th of June, 2016. And since then, I’ve published 234 episodes of Astrophiz twice a month.

Astrophiz has featured an incredible diverse lineup of experts spanning the entire spectrum of space science, engineering and data analysis. Rather than sticking to a single niche, my interviews dive deep into both the theoretical side of understanding and the practical, hard engineering side of capturing cosmic data so that we can understand our own universe.

So yeah, our anniversary episode is very special. Joining us from the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, Dr. Gabriela Ligeza is an internal research fellow working at the cutting edge of Mars exploration. From developing science sampling strategies for the ExoMars rover to scouting landing sites for the Artemis IV mission. You are going to love Gabriela. She is a storyteller and scientist extraordinaire.

Make sure you’re subscribed to Astrophiz so you’re the first to hear it. And remember, Astrophiz is free, ad-free and unsponsored.

Keep looking up. Clear skies.