June 2025

Planets to look for

Mars is visible in the northwest during the evenings and seems to hang in the same place all month. In the background you can see that it is moving through Leo and on June 17 has a close approach with Regulus – the brightest star in Leo – passing it by only 0.75 degrees, less than the width of your thumbnail at arm’s length.

Image: Mars and Regulus on June 17 with Leo outline for reference. Credit: Stellarium

Mercury is lost in the glare of the setting Sun for first couple of weeks of June but can then be seen in the northwestern sky for about an hour after sunset in the second half of the month.

Venus continues to dominate the morning sky, visible in the northeast before sunrise at a whopping –4.3 magnitude. Saturn is also there before sunrise, albeit fainter and further to the north. They are joined by the waning Moon in the last week of the month.

Image: The eastern sky before sunrise on June 20. Credit: Stellarium

Constellation of the month

Lupus – The Wolf

Lupus is a medium sized constellation in the southern sky and lies slightly off the plane of the Milky Way. Located between Scorpius and Centaurus, the pattern of stars was historically seen as an arbitrary animal slain by Centaurus, but these days is a constellation in its own right and interpreted as a wolf.

Image: Lupus the wolf, located between Centaurus and Scorpius. Credit: Stellarium

The best time to see Lupus in June is in the latter half of the month, during the early-to-mid evenings. Starting from the pointers in Centaurus, look to the upper left to the see the two closely spaced stars KeKouan and Ke Kwan.

Image: Reference stars for Lupus. Credit: Stellarium

The reason for the similarity of these names is because of their inclusion, along with several nearby stars, in an ancient Chinese constellation called Qi Guãn, meaning ‘Imperial Guards’. Interestingly, KeKouan is part of Lupus and Ke Kwan is part of Centaurus as the two similarly named stars straddle the boundary between the two constellations.

Lupus is home to the visually striking supernova remnant SN1006.

Image: SN1006. Credit NASA

So named, because in the year 1006 a new “star” appeared in the sky shining at a staggering (estimated) brightness of –7.5, bright enough to be seen during the day, and hung around for a few months before fading. Astronomers have been able to trace historical observations of this object to an exploding star that once shone in Lupus, the remnants of which now make up SN1006. As the star exploded it threw its outer layers off into space which still race away from the centre, creating the beautiful image above.

It is generally accepted that SN1006 was a Type 1a supernova, a special class of supernova that originates from a white dwarf star reaching critical mass and exploding. Because this critical mass is the same for every white dwarf star, Type 1a supernovas always explode with the same amount of material and thus shine with the same brightness. This allows astronomers to use them as reference objects to measure distances in the universe – the brighter the explosion looks, the closer it is; the fainter the explosion looks, the further away it is – a logical deduction only possible if you are looking at things of the same brightness. The use of Type 1a supernovas to measure distances ultimately led to the discovery that the expansion of the universe is speeding up.

Moon – Antares Occultation

As the Moon rises in the east on the evening of June 10 it will – briefly – pass in front of Antares, just barely grazing it edge-on in an event lasting about 10 minutes. A pretty sight even without a telescope.

Image: The Moon about to pass in front of Antares at 5:34pm on June 10. Credit: Stellarium

Australia reached for the stars, but the front fell off.

In a serious yet unintentionally comedic moment, Australia’s first home grown orbital rocket launch attempt was scrubbed in the early hours of May 16 when the front of the rocket fell off. The technical description of the incident is “the payload fairings were jettisoned early” but these days it’s impossible to say anything about the forward section of a vehicle malfunctioning without saying the iconic line.

Ok, roll clip:

Video: The front fell off. Credit: Clarke and Dawe.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, Gilmour Space – a private spaceflight company headquartered in Queensland – has been quietly developing their Eris rocket for about 10 years now and was finally ready to launch their first test flight from the purpose-built Bowen space facility on the northeast coast of Queensland.

Image: The Eris rocket being prepared on the launch pad. Credit: Gilmour Space

It is worth mentioning that Australia has been host to rocket launches before, mostly of European and US origin, but never have we achieved the combination of an Australian built rocket reaching orbit.

With the goal of carrying a jar of Vegemite into space as a test payload (seriously), this first test flight of Eris would take the rocket northeast over the Coral Sea and reach orbit after about 10 minutes. That was the plan anyway.

Sadly, due to having more important things to think about, Gilmour Space did not live stream any video footage of the launch, and most observers were relegated to waiting for updates on Xitter.

In the early hours of the morning of Friday May 16, the update came through.

𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗙𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝟭 – 𝗦𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗯𝗯𝗲𝗱

Last night, during final checks, an unexpected issue triggered the rocket’s payload fairing.

No fuel was loaded, no one was hurt, and early inspections show no damage to the rocket or pad.

(1/2) pic.twitter.com/dlqX7sMwsX

— Gilmour Space (@GilmourSpace) May 15, 2025

Credit: Gilmour Space

For those unfamiliar with rocket surgery, this is the payload fairing.

Image: Payload Fairings. Credit: Gilmour Space, markup by Smith/Scitech.

Its role is to protect the cargo from the atmosphere and make the rocket more aerodynamic during the early stages of launch. It is jettisoned when the rocket is high enough off the ground to be above most of Earth’s atmosphere, where wind resistance doesn’t matter anymore. Premature jettisoning of the payload fairing would almost certainly destroy a rocket in flight due to extreme aerodynamic stress.

Needless to say, once the fairing was gone, the launch wasn’t going to happen. On the bright side, though, the Vegemite survived.

We’ll send a replacement fairing from our Gold Coast factory after a full investigation.

That means we’re standing down from this test campaign to investigate and fix.

A new date for TestFlight1 will be announced once ready.

Ad Astra 🚀

(PS: Vegemite payload = safe : )
(2/2)

— Gilmour Space (@GilmourSpace) May 15, 2025

Credit: Gilmour Space

Gilmour Space has postponed any future launch attempts until they understand the cause of this incident, though they wasted no time shipping a new payload fairing.

#OneTeam #OneDream🚀
Fairing’s up in Bowen, and our team’s hard at work investigating the anomaly.

Hope to provide updates soon. Thanks for the support! pic.twitter.com/DyFLOcJkeZ

— Gilmour Space (@GilmourSpace) May 19, 2025

Credit: Gilmour Space

As anybody who has played Kerbal Space Program would know, it is important to check yo’ stagin’.