00:00Summer is winding down, but September is still prime time for stargazing.
00:06Here with what to watch for and when is Chris Palma.
00:09He's professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University,
00:13Eberly College of Science.
00:15Thanks so much for joining us.
00:17Sure. Thanks for having me.
00:19I'm sure your classes are pretty difficult.
00:21All right, Chris, with the cooler evenings,
00:23there's still a lot for stargazers to see in September.
00:27Yeah, absolutely.
00:31I'd love to start out and just tell everybody a little bit about trying to find Saturn on the sky.
00:36Sure, let's do it.
00:38Saturn is by far one of the crown jewels of things to look for in the nighttime sky.
00:45And in particular, I always like to encourage people,
00:48once you're able to spot it and you know you're looking at it,
00:51if you have a friend with a telescope, you have a pair of binoculars,
00:55anything that would let you magnify it a little bit, give it a try.
01:00Saturn is one of the most beautiful objects to look at with even a really, really small telescope.
01:07What's exciting is that coming up in just about a week, September 8th, September 9th,
01:13Saturn's at what's called opposition.
01:16So Saturn will be directly opposite in the sky from the Earth, from the sun.
01:23And what makes opposition really wonderful is that at that point,
01:27Saturn will be closest, brightest, and it will appear largest on the sky.
01:32It'll be as bright as some of the brightest stars in the sky, making it easy to see.
01:37And after midnight, it'll actually be pretty high up in the sky,
01:41so you won't lose it low near the horizon in lights and trees and things like that.
01:49It'll be visible all night.
01:51One interesting thing is the rings of Saturn can look anywhere from nearly face-on to nearly edge-on.
01:58And at opposition this time, the rings are going to actually appear mostly edge-on.
02:03So you won't have a great view of the rings,
02:06but it's absolutely worth it to try and get a pair of binoculars out and zoom in on it.
02:12Well, that's September 8th, and then September 22nd is the equinox.
02:16So what does that signify for us in the Northern Hemisphere?
02:21Yeah, well, you've probably mentioned this before, but just in case you haven't,
02:25equinox just means equal night.
02:28And what a lot of folks think is on the equinox itself,
02:32that means we have exactly 12 hours of daytime and exactly 12 hours of nighttime,
02:38and it's close but not quite.
02:40But it's pretty close to 12 hours of daytime, 12 hours of nighttime.
02:47And what's starting to happen, as I'm sure everybody is aware,
02:52the sun is sinking lower in the sky, right?
02:55So after the September equinox, each day at its highest point,
03:00the sun is going to be a little bit lower, a little bit lower, a little bit lower,
03:04until we get to that dreaded winter solstice in December,
03:08when we get the fewest hours of daylight and the most hours of nighttime.
03:12So for now, late September, we're at that wonderful time
03:16where the temperatures are a little bit cooler, the night's a little bit longer,
03:20but 12 hours of daytime and 12 hours of nighttime seem to,
03:24at least me, to be just about perfect.
03:27I love it. Lots of great information.
03:29We've got a pretty good pair of binoculars at my house,
03:31so I may try to spot Saturn there into early September.
03:34Chris Palma, professor of astronomy and astrophysics
03:36at Penn State's University Eberly College of Science.
03:39Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Comments