If you have a telescope, you might want to consider setting your alarm on Friday (May 31) for around 4 a.m. local daylight time (3 a.m. if you live in Hawaii, Arizona or Puerto Rico which do not observe daylight time). At that hour, if you step outside and look toward the east-southeast, you'll see what are probably the two most popular celestial objects to look at through a telescope: the moon and the planet Saturn.
The moon will be just a little over half a day past it officially arriving at its last quarter, or half-moon phase. Some might question why we call the moon at this particular phase a "quarter moon," since it is plainly obvious that what we see in the sky is a half-illuminated moon. But the "quarter" refers not to what we see in the sky, but rather that the moon is beginning its final quarter in its 29.53 day cycle, known as a synodic month.
