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From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate: September 18 Saturn and the Moon
Message-ID: <735@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Sep-85 02:00:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.735
Posted: Wed Sep 18 02:00:18 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 05:45:40 EDT
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 39


Look for Saturn near the moon Wednesday evening.  We'll tell you how --
after this.

September 18  Saturn and the Moon

If you look outside tonight, you can see an inconspicuous planet --
Saturn -- the closest bright object to the moon Wednesday evening.
Look for Saturn and the moon sometime after the sun goes down.  Then
they're in the southwestern twilight sky.  As Earth turns, the pair
sinks toward the horizon -- so that they're not visible for very long
this evening.  Both Saturn and the moon set by about 9:30.

After Saturn and the moon have set, there's still another planet you
can easily find on the dome of the evening sky.  That planet is Jupiter
-- now high in the south around 9:30 -- the brightest object besides
the moon in the evening sky.  Saturn and Jupiter are gas giant worlds
-- huge balls consisting mostly of atmosphere -- two of four such
worlds in our solar system.  It happens that all four gas giant worlds
are now in the evening sky -- though only Saturn and Jupiter are
visible to the eye.  Uranus and Neptune are located along an imaginary
line drawn on the sky between the two brighter planets.  If you extend
the two-dimensional dome of the sky into three-dimensions, then you can
imagine Uranus and Neptune traveling in between Saturn and Jupiter as
seen from our vantagepoint on Earth -- in a great procession of giant
planets in the outer solar system.

But Earth is also moving around the sun -- and as we do our evening sky
is turning away away from these planets.  By the end of the year, our
evening sky will have shifted so much that, of the giants, only Jupiter
will remain in the evening sky.


Script by Deborah Byrd.




(c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin


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