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• If nothing else, you should be able to see the planet Jupiter, the brightest star-like object in the evening sky. In fact, you can use Jupiter to locate the constellation Taurus the Bull in the evening sky from now until late May or early June. Both Jupiter and Taurus will shift over into the morning sky toward the end of June 2013.
• Use tonight's moon to locate something with the mind's eye - something that can't be seen, even with a telescope. It's the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which was launched from Earth on March 3, 1972.
• Pioneer 10 passed closest to Jupiter on December 4, 1973, and then passed the orbit of what once was the most distant planet in our sun's family on June 13, 1983. This spacecraft is now nearing or at the outer boundary of our solar system. In the not-too-distant future, Pioneer 10 is expected to leave the solar system and enter the realm of interstellar space.
• When we say that the moon is near Pioneer 10 tonight, what we really mean to say is that the moon and Pioneer 10 are close together on the sky's dome. In actuality, the moon and the Pioneer 10 spacecraft are nowhere close together in space. They're simply located near each other along our line of sight.
• The moon lies just over one light-second from Earth, while Pioneer 10 lies about 14.8 light-hours away. At present, Pioneer 10 is traveling about one light-hour farther away from the sun every 3 years. That doesn't sound like much, but remember that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.
• Although the moon will leave the constellation Taurus in a few days, you can continue to envision Pioneer 10 - with the mind's eye - in between Taurus' two brightest stars, Aldebaran and Elnath.
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