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Tonight’s Sky For September 2012, A Guide To Sky Watching And Heavenly Happenings
Monday, August 27, 2012 18:20
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Backyard stargazers get a monthly guide to the northern hemisphere’s skywatching events with “Tonight’s Sky.” In September, take a dip with the water constellations, Aquarius and Capricornus.
Evening Planets
Just after sunset, Saturn and Mars appear low above the western horizon. Try to catch a glimpse of them before they disappear.
Constellations and Deep-Sky Objects
September nights feature the “wet quarter” of the sky. Two neighboring constellations bear ancient references to water.
Aquarius is one of the oldest constellations, recognized even by early civilizations.In ancient mythologies, Aquarius is the god of the waters. Look for the Water Jar,a group of stars shaped like a Y.
A rich, compact cluster of stars can be seen in Aquarius. Known as M2, it contains about 150,000 stars located about 37,500 light-years away. Binoculars present it well, but a small telescope reveals much more detail in the cluster’s compact center.
Nearby lies the great constellation Capricornus. Known in mythology as the Water Goat, it represents a creature that fed and watered the infant Zeus, ruler of the Greek gods.
Algedi is the brightest star in Capricornus. It’s visible in binoculars as an elongated star. This odd shape is due to a visual trick. From our distant vantage point, two unrelated stars appear to be close together.
Capricornus also hosts a dense cluster of stars, M30. A small telescope easily resolves individual stars in the cluster.
Morning Planets
Majestic Jupiter rises in the east around midnight and goes on to dominate the southern sky in the hours before dawn. A telescope exposes the planet’s colored cloud bands. Brilliant Venus makes its appearance before sunrise. Look for Venus in the eastern sky.
Events
This month’s full Moon is known as the Harvest Moon. It rises in the east just before the end of twilight on September 29th in North America (September 30th in Europe and Asia). The added bright moonlight lengthens the evening to give farmers extra time to harvest their crops
“Tonight’s Sky” is produced by HubbleSite.org, online home of the Hubble Space Telescope. This is a recurring show, and you can find more episodes — and other astronomy videos — at HubbleSite.org.
Visit Tonight’s Sky on HubbleSite.
http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/tonights_sky
