Watch Wild Ducks<\/a><\/p>\nTiny Tethys is transiting the disk of Saturn beginning around 9:35 P.M. EDT, most easily visible from the eastern half of the U.S.<\/p>\n
Saturn is easy to locate in Cetus the Whale \u2014 it\u2019s the brightest light in the southeast around 9 P.M. local daylight time. Through any telescope, you\u2019ll easily see Saturn\u2019s disk and broad rings, as well as its brightest moon, Titan, which now lies far to the planet\u2019s east. You might also spot its three next-brightest moons, 10th-magnitude Tethys, Dione, and Rhea. Tethys is closing in on the planet\u2019s northeastern limb, while Rhea sits southeast and Dione southwest of the planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tethys will be easy to track until the transit begins \u2014 then it grows much harder, as the tiny disk offers little contrast with Saturn\u2019s much brighter cloud tops. The moon\u2019s journey is followed by its equally tiny shadow, which appears just northeast of Tethys around 9:50 P.M. EDT. Both moon and shadow will only be visible to astroimagers using advanced video-capture techniques. Tethys finally leaves the northwestern limb shortly after midnight EDT.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even if you can\u2019t watch Tethys\u2019 transit, you can still admire Saturn\u2019s stunning rings and its other visible moons. Note that Dione is moving closer to Saturn\u2019s southeastern limb \u2014 it will disappear behind the planet in an occultation just before 12:45 A.M. EDT (the 19th in the Eastern time zone only). And once the transit is through, visual observers should be able to pick up Tethys once more as it moves away from the planet, now on the western side of the planet, north of the rings.<\/p>\n
Sunrise: 7:14 A.M.
Sunset: 6:16 P.M.
Moonrise: 2:35 P.M.
Moonset: \u2014
Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous (54%)
*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.\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 Saturn\u2019s small moon Tethys makes another transit across the disk along with its shadow;…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,12839,147,62517],"class_list":["post-634192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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