Good news, bad; which do you want to hear first?

The good news is, there are several planetary conjunctions occurring this week which will make great binocular/telescope sights.

The bad news? The moon will be full tonight and will mess up a couple of them. Fortunately, the rest will be in the early morning when the moon won't be causing a problem.

Okay, first off, tonight, Wednesday, May 14, the moon will be full and at its brightest for the month. However, it should cause only a small problem for viewing the ringed-planet, Saturn, as it floats just to the upper right of the lunar orb.

The next night, Thursday, the moon moves on to be near the bright star Antares, the "Rival of Mars," the brightest star in the constellation, Scorpius, the Scorpion.

Antares is the bright dot about eight degrees to the moon's lower right, a little further than the width of your clenched fist held at arms length. The pair rise together at about 10 pm MDT, but will be best for viewing about an hour later.

While out looking at Antares, why not add a Messier object to your viewing list.

The globular star cluster M4 -- the fourth object on famed French comet hunter, Charles Messier's list of things that were not comets--will appear as a faint, fuzzy patch just to the upper right of Antares. If the moon does not wash out the sky that is.

Now, off to the morning skies for our look at a couple of other planetary conjunctions.

First on Thursday, May 15, be out no later than an hour before local sunrise looking east for the very bright Venus, very low on the horizon. Just above and left of Venus is the faint dot that is the outer ice-giant planet Uranus.

The pair will be visible in the same binocular field of view through Sunday morning, May 18.

One note of clarification. Astronomers have now taken to referring to the planets Uranus and Neptune as "ice giant planets" rather than gas giants which is the way I learned them.

The difference being that the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), are made of mostly helium and hydrogen in a gaseous form while the ice giants (Uranus and Neptune), are made of mostly water, methane, and ammonia in a frozen, icy form.

Back to the moon for a moment. Moon rise on Sunday, May 18, is about midnight. You won't be able to see it, but the moon and the outer planet Pluto (yes, I still consider Pluto as a regular planet) will be very close together.

If you can't see it, then why bother? Well, just so we will know where it is. I mean, it is out there so far and unless we have a ginormous telescope we can't see it. I think we can give it a little comfort if we just know where it is.

However, we will be getting a really close up and personal look in 2017 when the New Horizons robot spacecraft passes Pluto and we will get our best, first-hand look at just exactly what it looks like, and what is there. I am excited about that.

SKYWATCH: Full moon tonight, May 14.

NEXT WEEK: A look at Mercury in the evening, and more astronomical blathering.