A solar system trio<\/a><\/p>\nRising around sunset and standing highest around midnight, asteroid 324 Bamberga is visible in a small scope this evening, moving against the background stars of Capricornus. Look for it in the south around local midnight, about 5\u00b0 west of 4th-magnitude Omega (\u03c9) Capricorni, in the Sea Goat\u2019s southwestern region. You\u2019ll want a telescope with an aperture of 4 inches or larger, especially from the suburbs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Check the chart above and note the position of the nearby background stars. You may spot one of the \u201cstars\u201d in your eyepiece subtly moving throughout the night, especially if you take a photo or make a sketch every hour or two. If you come back tomorrow night at the same time, you should definitely notice one of those points has shifted \u2014 that\u2019s our asteroid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bamberga may have a high number of 324, but it\u2019s one of the main belt\u2019s largest worlds, cracking the top 20. It was so hard to catch because it spends a lot of time far from the Sun, and isn\u2019t often brighter than 9th magnitude, which it glows at now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunrise: 6:01 A.M.
Sunset: 8:10 P.M.
Moonrise: 10:58 P.M.
Moonset: 12:18 P.M.
Moon Phase: Waning gibbous (61%)
*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n
The morning of August 5 is a great opportunity not only to spot Saturn\u2019s moon Titan close to its parent planet, but also the elusive moon Iapetus as well. <\/p>\n
![\"Saturn](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ASY-SM0826_07.png\")
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\t\tIapetus is south of Saturn on Aug. 5, at its brightest (11th magnitude) for the month. Note that only moons brighter than 12th magnitude are shown. Credit: Astronomy: Roen Kelly<\/p>\n
Saturn is best viewed in the early morning, around 4 A.M. At that time, turn south and look for the brightest object in this region, about 50\u00b0 high \u2014 that\u2019s the ringed planet. Through a telescope, you\u2019ll spot several moons, starting with mid-8th-magnitude Titan just northeast of Saturn. Tenth-magnitude Rhea, Tethys, and Dione are closer to the planet; their relative positions change quickly, so they may not appear in exactly the same locations as on the chart above. You may or may not see Enceladus, which is roughly 12th magnitude, so don\u2019t be concerned if you can\u2019t find it, even with the chart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The crowning achievement is Iapetus, which now sits just under 2\u2019 south of Saturn, glowing at magnitude 11. By the time it reaches eastern elongation later this month, it will be over 9\u2019 from Saturn and have dropped by a magnitude to roughly the same brightness as Enceladus, making it a real challenge to spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alison Klesman\u00a0is senior editor of\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has studied a variety of topics, from minor planets to supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Main-belt world Bamberga shines at 9th magnitude, an easy catch with a small scope…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,7882,82,44123],"class_list":["post-582796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ASY-SM0826_03.png\")
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