<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Let\u2019s begin this month\u2019s AstroCal with the evening planets.\u00a0 <\/span>Venus<\/b> will be the star of the show near the western horizon shortly after sunset.\u00a0 Shining at magnitude -4.3 (remember,\u00a0 the lower the number, the brighter the object) will make it the brightest object in the fall sky after the <\/span>Sun<\/b> and the <\/span>Moon.\u00a0 <\/b>During the first half of the month, a much dimmer <\/span>Mercury<\/b> (mag -0.71) can be seen hovering just above the horizon and to the lower right of Venus.\u00a0 On Sept 8, Mercury will be just 5 degrees below and slightly left (or south) of the young <\/span>Crescent Moon<\/b>.\u00a0 <\/span>Jupiter<\/b> and <\/span>Saturn<\/b> appear in the SE at sunset and offer prime viewing all night long.\u00a0 Both are in <\/span>retrograde<\/b> motion, meaning they appear to be moving backwards, or westerly, against the background field of stars.\u00a0 This is an illusion caused by the <\/span>Earth<\/b> catching up to and passing these two <\/span>Gas Giants<\/b> as they orbit far beyond the orbit of <\/span>Mars<\/b>.\u00a0 Jupiter starts the month at mag -2.6 while Saturn is dimmer at +0.3 and both will slowly diminish in brightness as the fall continues.\u00a0 By contrast, the dimmest stars one can see with the unaided eye have a magnitude of +6.5.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Neptune<\/b> reaches opposition, or the point where it is on the opposite side of the <\/span>Sun<\/b> as seen from the Earth, on Sept 13.\u00a0 Neptune will be traveling the night sky in the constellation of <\/span>Aquarius, the Water Bearer<\/b> and will pass just 1.6 arc-minutes S of the 6.3 mag star, Phi Aquarius.\u00a0 An arc-minute is one sixtieth of a degree or the same angle one would see between the top and bottom of a 9 inch diameter soccer ball viewed from a distance of 8.25 football fields away.\u00a0 If observed on this date with a six inch telescope at 150-power, Neptune would appear as a bluish disk next to the smaller-appearing orange-colored star.\u00a0 <\/span>Uranus<\/b>, at mag 5.7, will be visible in the constellation of <\/span>Aries, the Ram <\/b>from late evening until morning.\u00a0 This month\u2019s viewing challenge will be to find the variable star <\/span>Mira<\/b> in <\/span>Cetus, the Whale<\/b>.\u00a0 Mira reached its peak brightness in August and should still be visible with binoculars 20 degrees SSW of Uranus.\u00a0 <\/span>Mars <\/b>is in conjunction and too close to the Sun to be seen this month.\u00a0 <\/span>The Red Planet<\/b> will next appear in the morning sky in November.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The big <\/span>Solar <\/b>event for the month takes place on September 22 at 3:21 p.m. when the vertical ray of the sun crosses the <\/span>Equator.\u00a0 <\/b>As viewed from locations on the Equator, the Sun would appear straight overhead at noon and marks the beginning of fall in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere.\u00a0 This event, known as the <\/span>Autumnal Equinox,<\/b> means we have reached the halfway point between the longest hours of daylight in June to the shortest period of daylight in December in the northern hemisphere.\u00a0 The fall and spring (or Vernal) equinoxes are the only times of the year when there are 12 hours of both daylight and night across the globe.\u00a0 Because the Earth is tilted 23.4 degree from the Earth – Sun plane, locations near the Equator always have 12 hours of daylight and darkness.\u00a0 The Earth\u2019s poles vary from 0 hours to 24 hours of daylight between June and December at the North Pole and vice versa for the South Pole.\u00a0 This tilt is also responsible for the changes we see in the northern United States marked by the winter, spring, summer, and fall seasons we take for granted in the Great Lakes region.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The <\/span>New Moon <\/b>(or Dark of the Moon if you prefer) will take place on Monday, September 6 with the <\/span>First Quarter<\/b> appearing on Sept 13, the <\/span>Full (<\/b>or <\/span>Harvest) Moon<\/b> taking place on Sept 20 (7:55 p.m. EDT), and the <\/span>Last Quarter <\/b>Sept 28.\u00a0 On Friday, Sept 17, the <\/span>Gibbous phase<\/b> of the waxing Moon will be just below Jupiter (this is the shape of the Moon when it is between the Quarter and Full stage).\u00a0 Also sometimes called the <\/span>Barley Moon <\/b>or the <\/span>Full Corn Moon, <\/b>the Harvest Moon is so named because it is found nearest the autumnal equinox during the time of the traditional fall harvest season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Compiled by Ken Raisanen of WOAS-FM – information provided by <\/span>Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar<\/span><\/i>, Michigan State University.\u00a0 More information and subscription information can be found on the their website at <\/span>http:\/\/abramsplanetarium.org\/<\/span><\/a>skycalendar\/ or on Twitter at <\/span>http:\/\/twitter.com\/AbramsSkyNotes<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Yearly subscriptions cost $12 and can be started anytime.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 How more ‘fall’ can a song get when it starts with brown leaves?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Let\u2019s begin this month\u2019s AstroCal with the evening planets.\u00a0 Venus will be the star of the show near the western horizon shortly after sunset.\u00a0 Shining at magnitude -4.3 (remember,\u00a0 the lower the number, the brighter the object) will make it the brightest object in the fall sky after the Sun and the Moon.\u00a0 During […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2291,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions\/2291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}