Moon landing throwback<\/a><\/p>\nSaturn\u2019s largest and brightest moon is Titan \u2014 a world that is, in fact, larger than the planet Mercury! Shining at mid-8th magnitude, Titan is easy to view through a telescope this morning, once the ringed planet rises high enough to easily catch in your optics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By about 2 A.M. local daylight time, Saturn has reached roughly 25\u00b0 above the eastern horizon. It\u2019s the brightest point of light here, hanging above the large figure of Cetus the Whale. Zoom in on Saturn with a telescope and you\u2019ll easily pick up Titan, which lies just northwest of the planet this morning. It\u2019s moving westward as the hours pass, pulling farther away from its parent world over time, but still in the same telescopic field of view.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll likely see other moons as well, such as 10th-magnitude Dione, Rhea, and Tethys. The former two lie east of Saturn, but the latter is just to the west, and depending on when you look, closing in on Saturn\u2019s southwestern limb. It won\u2019t quite make it, though \u2014 shortly before 4:30 A.M. CDT (as the Sun is nearly rising along the East Coast), Tethys disappears into Saturn\u2019s shadow, which also stretches southwest of the planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunrise: 5:49 A.M.
Sunset: 8:23 P.M.
Moonrise: 1:57 P.M.
Moonset: \u2014
Moon Phase:\u00a0Waxing gibbous (57%)
*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
We\u2019ll return to Saturn tomorrow morning, the 22nd, to catch the 10th-magnitude moon Dione skimming north of the planet\u2019s pole from about 3 A.M. to 4 A.M. EDT. Point your telescope toward the ringed planet as soon as it\u2019s readily visible above your horizon to see how the view has changed since yesterday: Titan is now far (nearly 2\u2019) to the planet\u2019s northwest, while Rhea is quite far to the east. Around 2 A.M. EDT, Tethys is just north of the rings also to the east of the planet, and Dione is closing in from the northeast.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\t\tEarly this morning, several moons cluster close to Saturn: Dione is preparing to skim north of the planet\u2019s pole, while Tethys will transit the disk. This chart only shows satellites brighter than 11th magnitude. North is up and east is left. Credit: Stellarium\/Oleg Pluton<\/p>\n
Over the next few hours, Dione will pass north of Saturn but won\u2019t transit, leaving a sliver of dark space between the world\u2019s limb and the moon. However, its tiny shadow will transit \u2014 if you\u2019re an experienced planetary imager, particularly with video capture, this is for you. (If not, you\u2019re not likely to see the shadow by eye.) The shadow leads the moon, appearing at the northeastern limb just after 1:30 A.M. EDT and taking two hours to complete its transit. It disappears from the northwestern limb just as Dione is roughly due north of Saturn\u2019s pole.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Imagers, stay alert \u2014 next up is Tethys\u2019 shadow, which appears at the eastern limb just above the rings around 4 A.M. EDT. Tethys itself then begins a transit around 4 A.M. CDT (note the time zone change). Again, only imagers will likely see this event, as the small moon will be hard to make out against the bright cloud tops. Tethys\u2019 shadow transit ends around 4:30 A.M. MDT (again, note the time zone change), while Tethys slips away from the disk about 30 minutes later.\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 There\u2019s a great chance this morning to view Saturn\u2019s largest and brightest moon, Titan,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85,46,2928,141,43844],"class_list":["post-551998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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